


Return To Farpoint (20th Anniversary Remix)

by Wilderness_of_Mirrors



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Next Generation (Movies)
Genre: Bajoran Culture, Bisexual Female Character, Casual Sex, F/F, Femslash, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Rebound Sex, Relationship breakdown, Rihannsu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 00:51:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16295156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wilderness_of_Mirrors/pseuds/Wilderness_of_Mirrors
Summary: 10 years after the "Encounter at Farpoint", the new Enterprise returns for the station's official opening. Farpoint's commander and the ship's doctor, each at a cross roads, find themselves mutually enamoured of the other; their best friends totally ship it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was so proud at churning out this 7 chapter fic back in the day (yes yes I know, a /whole 7 chapters/. Wow, so huge). It had narrative structure and conceits, call backs, invocation of specific phrases in previous chapters. It reflected issues in my life I had at the time and was about my own characters messing around in the Trekverse, because bringing my own characters to the sandbox is totally my thing. When it was done and posted, I printed it out – there were pictures and everything – and bound it up as a booklet that of course no one else would ever see because like hell did you let the family units know you wrote this stuff. Especially anything like erotica.
> 
> RTF is pretty much exactly 20 years old now as I post this. The booklet is long gone now, and the passage of that time has left a few scuff marks on the story. By which I largely mean "Oh gods, what was I thinking?'. So anyway, here it is with a bit of a loving polish and shine, but still largely as it first came into the world.
> 
> Originally posted: 1998 on alt.startrek.creative.moderated  
> Remixed: September 2018
> 
> Pairing: Beverly/Female OC, implied Deanna/Male OC
> 
> Rating (Australia): M (not recommended for people under 15) for traumatic relationship breakdowns, casual hookups, and sexual activity.
> 
> Chapters: 7/7
> 
> \---
> 
> Slightly spoilery Content Guide:  
> Chapter 1: Brief “you are here” history of Farpoint. Introduction to Mkaela (femOC) & discovery her partner has cheated on her. Introduction to Maddyn (male OC), trying to help his bestie get through her grief.  
> Chapter 2: Mkaela’s life gets back to normal. Deanna Troi recalls her introduction to sex ed.  
> Chapter 3: More back story for Farpoint, Mkaela (still sad but determined to move on), and Maddyn  
> Chapter 4: Mkaela and Beverly meet over a small case of extreme anaphylactic shock; Deanna and Maddyn both totally ship it. Beverly considers colouring outside the lines.  
> Chapter 5: The date is made. The betazoids are all out of Netflix.  
> Chapter 6: Date night.  
> Chapter 7: Lazy morning sex and bitter sweet farewells.

Return to Farpoint  
Chapter 1  
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Farpoint Station. A small city created on a small world called Evaran by its inhabitants and known to Federation science as Deneb IV. Offered as a gift by the native Bandai, it was designed to be a vital port of call that would bring starships to explore the unknown space beyond. Explorers whose presence and commerce would in turn infuse a fading culture with a new vitality.  
  
But the wondrous beauty of Farpoint had been a confection of lies and abuse. Native to the great void between stars, a sapient chimaeric entity had made planetfall seeking succour for its injuries. Desperate to escape their own decline, the Bandai reacted to this astonishing first contact not with friendship but chains. They forced their designs and desires upon its malleable form, forcing it to become the city.  
  
Secrets like that cannot be kept forever.  
  
The being's mate knew, and in knowing was determined to repay the betrayal in full with Bandai blood. The omnipotent Q knew as well, but their own peculiar politics saw them manipulate the crew of the newly commissioned _Enterprise-D_ into a position that would require them to act on the Q's behalf. For better or for worse.  
  
Fortunately the crew made the right choice, but in the wake of it all the Federation was left with a problem. Had the determination to secure a foothold in the region been any less strong, the Federation may well have abandoned Deneb IV to the dubious — and some said richly deserved — mercy of other galactic powers. Cooler and kinder heads prevailed, and Starfleet Command instead offered the chastised Bandai a second chance. The Federation would supply the workers and materials needed to construct Farpoint for real, following the blueprints that had been created to cover the deception. Unsurprisingly, the offer was accepted with little hesitation and much enthusiasm, and the required personnel and equipment were duly packed off to begin construction.  
  
That was ten years ago.  
  
Ten sometimes very long years during which people laboured to create once more the open spaces, grand pillars, lush gardens, meandering concourses and sweeping arches that had initially greeted the ships of the Federation. Years spent building not only a new city and a new community, but also ironically turning yet another strange wanderer between stars into something that would serve to shelter Farpoint from the harsh caress of its parent star.  
  
At first, the Farpoint construction crew had been inspired by friendly competition, by the desire to create something lasting and good, something they could point out to friends and family and posterity and say "I was a part of that". Then came Wolf 359, the truth about the Gamma quadrant, rumours of malignant infiltration. Things that had bought fear, yes, but had fueled an even greater desire to see what they had started reach its conclusion.

 

* * *

  
  
Overhead, the wan orange light of day recedes as the sun slinks beneath the eastern horizon. As always, the retreating day creates aurora-like corruscations across the trailing surfaces of the alien supply station in orbit above the city even as the artificial illumination of the night slowly comes to life. Everywhere one can look, the station crew and their friends are out and about. All heading for the great spire that projects almost a kilometre upwards at the heart of Farpoint, and the amphitheatre that sits beneath its base.  
  
They are dressed in all manner of clothes from all manner of cultures from all manner of planets. Dressed for the hedonistic gathering that is celebrating the end of an era and their last chance to gather as a group before many of them begin shipping out to an uncertain future. Three days from now, the dignitaries arrive to make their little speeches and conduct their little tours and sign off on everything just in time for the ever more likely prospect of war.  
  
Which makes for the opportunity for a very big party indeed.  
  
There is so much music stirring now as the sun goes down. Some of it remains rooted as a lure for revellers, some not so much: it is as wild and eclectic a mix as the people moving to it are. They dance or eat or swim or perform or... engage in more private efforts... as they choose or are tempted to, and none venture to say otherwise. Tonight is that rare and precious chance to explore options that might never offer themselves again. Maybe should never have been.  
  
There's quite a bit of sculptural art around the city, as much a part of Farpoint's underlying physical structure as it is ornamentation. While the Federation as a culture believes in the existence of art for art's sake, the adage about form and function can be found at play here. Looking closely enough, amongst the beauty is revealed the presence of phaser arrays and torpedo launchers and shield grids. None of these had been part of the original vision for Farpoint but incidents like Wolf 359 had a way of making people see things differently than they might prefer.  
  
When the sun finally vanishes, the city's sword and shield come to life. Not to destroy but to create a display of luminescent pyrotechnics. Starbursts and showers and cascades and streamers and briefly existing nebula. A spectacular myriad of colours that are met by great  
applause and good cheer. Even the ever grey faces of the bandai are brightened, and not merely from reflected light.  
  
No one wants to think about the emplacements that aren't being used and are instead standing ready for… other eventualities. Sadly some people have no choice, even if tonight means such worries can be momentarily set aside.  
  
One of these guardians is a woman sitting by herself in one of the parks in the near lee of the Spire. Looking to be somewhere around 40 standard years, she is like most everyone else dressed casually — layers of velvet, raw silk, and lace, their fiery palette a pleasing match to the copper tones of her skin and short indigo-black hair. Apart from the combadge upon her breast, the only other adornment she wears is the chain earring on her pointed ear that marks her as Bajoran as much as the ridges on the bridge of her nose. A plate of food rests by her side, its contents being picked at in a desultory fashion as she watches a pair of Bolians juggle flaming batons and wickedly sharp knives between themselves without once losing the big insane grins they wear as a gathering crowd ooh and ahh their appreciation.  
  
Discontent however is writ large upon her face as her patience finally gives way and she stabs her fork down with enough force to drive the tines through the plate into the ground beneath. Yet again she pulls her combadge off to check the chronometer embedded in its back, turns it over, poises her thumb above it.  
  
"This is ridiculous," she declares irritably, and presses down. "Comp--"  
  
A young child all of four years old hurtles into her hard enough that both of them end up sprawled on the ground, momentarily stunned.  
  
"Geez, sorry Commander!" a young man exclaims as he kneels down to scoop up the child with one hand before offering the Commander his other. Something about the incredibly turquoise eyes and impossibly heroic features combine with wavy ginger hair and the chiseled perfection of his bronzed torso to stir a half remembered involuntary leap of her heart — and in all honesty, other parts too — as she accepts. "Despite being a parent in three other life times, it still amazes me the way they get away on you."  
  
The commander smiles ruefully, hiding her mood as she gets around to noticing the crescent shapes that cascade down from his temples and disappear beneath that wide open sleeveless vest. Trill, her minds reaches. Sunchasing redhead. Daughter. Knows me. Familiar...  
  
"You're Rhodry's husband, aren't you?" Realising that her combadge isn't in her hand, she casts about trying to find it. "Looks like you've been sailing down at the Cape." This last remark is directed at his clothes — a pair of canvas sandals and baggy trousers, both white, in addition to his bone coloured vest — all of which have the slight tang of salt about them.  
  
"Yes and yes," he answers, propping his daughter in one arm before pointing the other. "And it's over there. Sonji Dahl, and this is Clarina." With the two of them side by side, there is no doubting that they are family.  
  
"Have the two of you found out where Rhodry's next posting will be?" she asks, retrieving it. "He said this morning he was hoping for an early answer."  
  
Sonji shakes his head. "He's still hopeful about getting Mars, though we wouldn't mind Alpha Centauri either." She can hear it in Sonji's voice, the hope that their new home won't be a frontline ship. "Anyhow, Rhodry's minding our place at the panto so we'd better rush, hadn't we sweetie?"  
  
"Yes dadda," comes the answer, along with a tug at the Commander's sleeve. A shared smile between the two adults as little fingers are disentangled.  
  
"Good luck," she waves as the other two depart.  
  
"Thanks," comes the cheerful reply, but once they're gone the humour flees her features and she taps her combadge.  
  
"Computer, any messages for Selwyn-Keri Mkaela?"  
  
"Your inbox is empty."  
  
"Is Alex Keri-Selwyn back online?"  
  
The pseudo-female voice replies with emotionless clarity. ""Negative. The Do Not Disturb protocol established six hours, twenty-one minutes and eighteen seconds ago remains in effect. The messages you have left remain unreviewed. Do you wi--"  
  
"Fuck!  
  
"I do not understand that input. Do you wish to enact a command override?"  
  
  
For a moment Mkaela almost does it. But that way lays another argument about boundaries. It's not an argument she wants to have. Particularly not tonight. "No," she sighs. "Alex has to have put it there for a reason. Computer, give me the location of Alex Keri-Selwyn."  
  
"Working. Deputy Attache Alex Keri-Selwyn is in residential unit 12-Gamma-5."  
  
The smile returns to Mkaela's face. "Twit. You always forget to turn things back on." A little bounce in her step, she hurries towards the Spire and the turbolifts there in. For all the speed implied in the name, it seems to take far too long before the doors open, revealing the long radial corridor in which their quarters are located. Skipping, almost running, she reaches their door, slaps the biometric pad and waltzes in.  
  
"Alex?" she calls, surprised by the darkness. There's no answer to her query. "Computer, activate lights and give me the location of Alex Keri-Selwyn."  
  
"Working. Deputy Attache Alex Keri-Selwyn is in residential unit 12-Gamma-5."  
  
Mkaela looks around, brow furrowed. Everything looks in order. Her uniform is still folded over the back of the extra long lounge chair where she'd stripped it off almost an hour ago now. Souvenirs from two lifetimes of service to Starfleet and the Federation Civil Service remain in place on wall shelves, including the painting of themselves they'd received as a wedding gift. The fruit bowl and vase of flowers sit unmolested on the dining table.  
  
"Command override. Cancel the DND and activate audio distress beacon on Alex Keri-Selwyn's communicator."  
  
A shrill electronic warble comes from the direction of the bedroom. Running towards the noise and fearing the worst, she is relieved yet oddly disappointed to finds the clothes Alex had set off in this morning hanging neatly next to their shared dressing table. A quick check reveals the Federation symbol-style badge the civilian personnel wear instead of the Starfleet insignia still attached to the jacket beneath an upturned lapel.  
  
"Absent-minded twit," she sighs in exasperation, albeit fond, before cancelling the beacon and grabbing the badge. Good thing they don't live on a starship. "Well, looks like we're going to have that argument after all. Computer, command override. Scan Farpoint for Alex's biosignature and give me site-to-site transport to that location."  
  
"Working." Her heart pounds once. Twice. "Biosignature located. Energising."  
  
The world dissolves and reforms.  
  
And to her utter horror, when it does Mkaela discovers it's never going to be the same again.

 

* * *

  
Sapphire waves lap at dark, water-rounded rocks with a soft rhythm that comes from the two crescent moons hanging in a rapidly lightening mauve sky. A wind gently rustles the silver green leaves of the trees, coaxing a gentle tinkling sound from the crystal wind chimes someone has strung amidst their branches. Between the trees, countless feet have worn a path through the misty grass that connects the lake shore to the entrance of a cave some thirty or so metres away.  
  
"Nice spot you've chosen," a man strolling out of the cave remarks casually. Narrow brown eyes and a tan complexion contrast with flowing shoulder-length dark blonde hair that show black at the roots. The top clasp of his mustard yellow shirt are undone to reveal a torque made of bronze and obsidian, and his hands are thrust into the pockets of his baggy yellow pants. When he smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling a little, it doesn't quite manage to disguise his concern.  
  
"Cruk off, Maddyn," Mkaela, her back to the cave entrance, snaps without bothering to look up. She perches upon a small boulder emerging from the water on its own, close enough to easily leap onto from the shore yet far enough to prevent physical contact.  
  
It's obvious to him she's doing her best not to let him see her cry, so he doesn't mention it and just lets the silence play out.  
  
"How'd you find me anyway?"  
  
"I could say I guessed," he answers, his sandaled foot proding the remains of her combadge and the stone that killed it. "But I'm a Betazoid and we both know you're broadcasting loud enough anyone with a smattering of telepathic potential will feel something's wrong." It's hard, watching the friend — his best friend — he has come to know and care for these past years trying to cope with such a harsh and terrible pain. Hard too, fighting back the instinct to reach out mentally to her the way he would with a fellow betazoid. While he doesn't know the specifics, he can feel her struggling against the grief and the anger and the bewilderment. Particularly the bewilderment  
  
"Cruk off," she says again but not quite as forcefully. "I want to be alone." There's a sniffle this time, a hand drawn hastily across her face.  
  
"Mkaela--" he begins, moving slowly towards her. It's tempting to reach into her, find what she wants him to say. Apart from the fact that she'd sense the intrusion thanks to the lessons he's been giving her, however, it's not what she needs him to do.  
  
"They betrayed me, Madd," she replies, looking helplessly at her hands, as if the remedy to her woes lies somehow locked within them. "Two of the people I trusted most in the Entire. Damn. Universe!" The final three words are punctuated by her fists striking the stone upon which she sits, again and again. "You know, they didn't even have the decency to be caught in the fucking act!"  
  
"Then...?"  
  
"They were _asleep_." She spits the word out like bile. "Asleep!" She shakes her head, bowed over her lap, voice trembling but refusing still to break.  
  
"Finding them in the act would have been worse, surely?" He stands at the other side of the gap now. How terribly symbolic, the thought crosses his mind. Standing so close, the raw intensity of his best friend's emotions batter at the barriers of his min. It's nothing he can't handle, but he has to respond to them all the same. Not by telepathy but instead by the far older means of simply being here for her.  
  
When she shows no sign of telling him to go, he makes the jump across and sits down next to her. Mkaela's only physical reaction is to look across as his feet enter the periphery of her vision.  
  
"It's like they didn't even care, that I was so unimportant I didn't even rate the consideration of a pretence anymore." She looks away again, back into the holographic distance. "If they had been at it when I found them, at least that would explain why Alex kept me waiting: lost in the throes of passion. Like we used to be" She looks at him for the first time, snarling with a fury he has rarely seen in her. "But they were asleep, which means that they felt safe, that there was nothing to worry about. That _I_ was nothing to worry about!"  
  
Wordlessly, he takes her battered hand in his and strokes it softly. She offers no resistance to the comforting.  
  
"They didn't even know I was there," she snorts bitterly. "When I saw them, it was like being stabbed and having my insides torn out and I ran here. Of all places, I ran here. The place we started being _us_."  
  
Again she looks away. "Why'd they do it to me, Madd?" she asks, looking at her hands as she had before. "I mean, look, you know I almost--" She bites off the sentence, a fresh pain. "You were there. I could have done it so easily. But I didn't. Because we were good together, the two of us. I mean, we fought sometimes but all couples do that. The sex was good, great sometimes, or at least I thought so. We were talking about children now Farpoint is all over. Fucking kids, Madd! Something I didn't think I'd ever be able to think of doing again. I just… We loved each other. I can't believe Alex would do this. Let alone to me."  
  
She covers her face with her hands, a single sob wracking her body. "The body language? The fact that they were sleeping? That says to me 'this isn't a last moment fling'. If it had been just that, we'd come back from this. I would have been angry, but I can understand giving in to the moment. A lapse I can forgive, if that's all it is." Another sob. "The two of them were so comfortable together, draped over each other like we d-- No. Like we used to. You see something like that and you look back, at every late night, every missed appointment, every absence, every excuse... The idea that a weakness became a fault became something that could have been going on for months. For _years_. You understand the domino effect, the idea that maybe it could be you instead of the person you say you love sleeping on that bed with someone else you thought you could trust… but actually looking at it, comprehending it… There's this horrific moment where the logic of it all breaks apart. Like your life just has."  
  
Maddyn pauses for a short while before making the decision to pull his friend into a hug, one armed so that she can escape. She tenses for a moment like she might just do that then collapses against him, the tears of rage and grief she's been fighting back given full reign. He has no idea how long it takes for the great wracking sobs to finally subside, but it doesn't matter. Even if she wasn't someone he'd happily go through hell and highwater for, its a shared catharsis. And a reminder of the inherent difficulty of telepaths lying to telepaths, the reason he keeps his serious relationships for other betazoids.  
  
"What now?" he asks when Mkaela finally regains her composure.  
  
"What do you think?" she snaps acidly, wiping at her eyes with the palms of her hands. "I'll fight for what's mine. I fought for this job. I fought to keep the Shield. But I think we're past that point. Alex… Alex isn't mine anymore. How can I ever go back, feel comfortable, feel safe, knowing that... knowing..."  
  
"Yeah," Maddyn agrees.  
  
"Yeah," she echoes. "I've already left a message with the JAG office for them to draw up the papers tomorrow." Saying the words makes her deflate slightly, marks her final surrender. "Go and enjoy the party. I do really just want to be alone right now. I need to get my head around this. Around not having Alex as a fixture in my life anymore. Around what I and not we want to do now."  
  
"Sure," he says, patting her on the shoulder a couple of times.  
  
"Thanks for being a friend."  
  
Answering with one of the few bajoran benedictory phrases he knows, Maddyn exits the holodeck despondently. The sensations of the celebration, aural and psychic alike, wash over him and he opens himself up to the the joy of it all, letting his concern for Mkaela be pushed back by everyone else's' good time. They've been friends for something approaching six years, he and her, and he knows she'll pull through. It's one on those certain things, a law of nature.  
  
Checking the time, he decides to find something potent to drink. Something real to kill a few hundred brain cells with.  
  
\---  
  
To Be Continued...


	2. Chapter 2

Return to Farpoint   
Chapter 2  
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-  
  
Many cultures reach a point where they recognise the benefits of modularity and standardisation of design. Thus, enter any Starfleet installation or vessel and things can be found in roughly the same location: command and tactical positions to the rear, main operations up front, support systems on the periphery. Farpoint, being for all intents and purposes a Starfleet station, is no exception to this principle.  
  
Located at the base of the Spire directly above the amphitheatre, Operations is an essentially circular chamber, with a door at each cardinal point and a decor in various shades of pastel blue and grey. The front of the chamber, and a sizable chunk of empty floor space, is dominated by a floor-to-ceiling display mechanisms currently displaying a montage of images from across the expanse of the station. Dominating the centre of the chamber is pair of long crescent-shaped consoles abutting each other, from which several people run the station's tactical and primary systems, while consoles embedded in the wall access the various secondary support systems as need demands. A two tiered layout elevates Mkaela's open-plan 'office' about a metre and a half above the rest of the room so that she might have a mostly uninterrupted view of her command, with a second flight of stairs leading up to  
a fifth door.  
  
It is through this door that Mkaela makes her entrance, all evidence of last night's emotional devastation carefully stowed away beneath a freshly replicated crisply pressed uniform. She stands framed in that portal for a moment, the early morning light seeping in through the large window of the public reception area beyond casting her in silhouette. A moment of silent appraisal, of attuning herself, then she steps down into the quiet hum and bustle of it all.  
  
"Kula. Anything exciting?" she asks the duty officer from the previous shift, a Bandai man going by the name Ahktar Jes. The palette from which Nature has drawn the current generations of his people means he looks older and more worn than his actual age should justify.  
  
Jes shakes his head as he turns towards her. "All quiet." Then he holds up a finger as a display draws his attention. "Actually, no. Lieutenant Singh?"  
  
"One of the outlying sensor platforms is detecting a warp field approaching the outer perimeter of the solar system," the Lieutenant running overwatch of the tactical console calls out. His long fingered hands sweep over his panel, interrogating it with swift proficiency as the gunnery team call up fire solutions on their own displays. "It's on a bearing of 245 mark 87, warp factor 5, on a course for us."  
  
"One of ours?" Mkaela asks, appearing cautious but as unconcerned as she can manage. Around her, she can feel the entire Ops crew tense subtly as they await the answer. The number of starships passing through is only increasing, and there have been enough squabbles and freedom of navigation exercises carried out by competing stellar powers over the years that they can no longer assume a vessel approaching from Federation territory is a friendly.  
  
"Federation warp signature," Singh answers, the broad white slash of his teeth parting his beard in an obvious sign of relief. Someone beside her remembers to breath again. "IFF transponder codes read as the _Enterprise_."  
  
"They're early," Mkaela sighs. "Typical showboating." She takes a sip of her drink, realises she's not actually carrying one, and masks the slip by rubbing her temples "Alright, call up the tank and give me an ETA."  
  
A moment after her command is issued, motes of light begin to erupt from projectors in the floor and ceiling, quickly resolving themselves into a scattering of planets, moons, and satellites both natural and manufactured. A slowly rotating Starfleet emblem appended with its registry number and movement data represents the Enterprise, with a dotted red line showing its extrapolated trajectory towards the burnt sienna orb of Deneb IV.  
  
"She's slowing to impulse now," Singh reports. "Final orbit estimated in six hours."  
  
"Brilliant. Jes, tell the reception crews to step on it and bring the deadline forward a couple of hours. Just in case the incoming gentry are going to be jerks."  
  
"Will do," the Bandai nods. "I'm sure the Groppler will be thrilled by this."  
  
"I know I am," Mkaela responds cooly. Turning around, she walks back up to her office and keys the control that causes the retracted wall leading to ops to slide closed with a muted hum. Dropping into her chair, she hits the speed-dial setting for the Groppler's office.  
  
Power relationships involving protectorates and what are effectively colonial installations on pre-Membership planets is always a murky area sane people leave in the hands of diplomats, but it currently forms a cornerstone of her working life. Even though she possess ultimate authority over the station itself, as the leader of the planetary government, Groppler Zorn is technically her boss. His eagerness to see his planet achieve Membership happily leads to a largely hands off approach, though at times it lends him a certain... obsequiousness which puts her nerves on edge.  
  
She really hopes that this isn't going to be one of those times.  
  
"Kula, Commander," Zorn's voice fills the room as he issues the ritual morning salutation of his people. He sounds his normal spry self at any rate.  
  
"Kula, Groppler," she answers, looking up at one of the audio pickups located in the roof. "It looks like the _Enterprise_ has decided to show up early. She'll be in orbit in six standard hours."  
  
"Is anything wrong?"  
  
"I doubt it," she chuckles. "Probably just been playing with the performance ratios of their engines. From what I hear, their engineer is pretty talented." _More likely the Fleet's new flagship was just showing off_ , she thinks.  
  
Zorn makes a hrmphing sound, followed by the sounds of a computer terminal being accessed. "According to these logistics reports, my people won't be ready for the ceremony for at least nine standard hours. This really is most inconvenient."  
  
"Just because _Enterprise_ decided to show up early doesn't mean we need to rush anything, Groppler," she assuages him. "There's a schedule. We're going stick to it."  
  
"Are you sure they won't be upset? Captain Picard has a certain... reputation... amongst us." The concern in his voice is unsurprisingly genuine given the circumstances of the Enterprise's first visit.  
  
"He has a certain reputation amongst us too," she answers, the comment slipping out before she can stop it. Same man, different shit storm. Thankfully she'd been here and nowhere near it, but she knows some people who still can't look at him without flinching. "We'll ask them to hold a ship-board reception so they can show off the new flagship," is her blithe answer. "Something low key: drinks, a few nibbly things." _That's Alex talking there_ , she winces inwardly. "When he calls to check in, you'll have nothing to worry about."  
  
"Very well then, Commander, I shall leave such remonstrations and arrangements in your capable hands. Until this afternoon, kula."  
  
"Kula." The connection breaks with a bleep.  
  
Six hours.  
  
Idly Mkaela calls up the flight plans of the various starships currently in orbit or scheduled to arrive within the next few weeks. Dates, destinations, mission profiles. Alex being on the Coronado automatically rules that particular ship out of her calculations, creating a plot in 4D projections in the air above her desk to the other side of the quadrant and eventually home. To Bajor.  
  
Forty years is a long time to be away.  


* * *

  
  
Necessity has dictated that Starfleet be the Federation's military arm, but it has always been more than just a standing army. So much more.  
  
The _Galaxy_ -class starship is perhaps the ultimate expression of all Starfleet has aspired to be. It's true having civilians — contractors, families, specialists, all the people who hadn't sworn to lay down their lives in the execution of their duties should the need ever arise — on board is a dangerous thing to do. Their presence weighs on the vessel's captain with every potentially fatal tactical command that had to be made, but their presence serves to turn one ship into a community. Yes, it's a burden, but one ship's creators hoped would force a search for less violent solutions.  
  
This new _Enterprise_ isn't the same. It's less massive, harder, more aggressive. It's been shaped by almost a decade of terror instilled by first contact with the Borg. She still has what it takes to be a ship of exploration, but she's more inwardly focused on diplomacy and defence. There are still families here, but fewer of them. Many of them are new, just starting out and so there's less children to get under the Captain's feet. Less innocents to endanger if needs must. There's still all the support mechanisms they need, but rather more… efficient.  
  
_Sometimes I'm not entirely sure I made the right choice coming back_ , Deanna Troi thinks to herself as she looks around the empty forward lounge before sparing a look for Will. "Think we'll have an unwelcome visitor?" she asks. "Looking to romp around with his favourite pet?"  
  
"You can never tell with him," Will shrugs fatalistically. At least she pictures him doing so, hunkered down as he is behind the bar. "He's apparently visited Farpoint a couple of times over the years since, but the Federation hasn't heard from him or his kind for the last 13 months."  
  
"Almost seems inevitable then, doesn't it?" she sighs. "I hate having to organize these damn shipboard receptions."  
  
"Look at this way Deanna," Will chuckles upon standing. "We have first access to the wet bar, and from what I can tell there's quite a bit of real stuff here. Looks like Guinan left us a decent going away present before she took off wherever it was."  
  
"You lush, you," she scolds playfully, pulling up one of the barstools. "I don't see why Starfleet didn't give us the people to run this place until she comes back. If she comes back. What have you got down there anyway?"  
  
"Some contract or something," Will shrugs, putting 2 glasses on the illuminated bar top. "The Captain was rather vague about it, but I think we're due to collect them before we head off on that survey mission."  
  
"Gaseous anomalies. Oh be still my heart," she mocks. "What have you found for us?"  
  
"Three bottles of the obligatory saurian brandy. Something mauve that smells like those clythla bushes back on Betazed. Bajoran spring wine. A barrel of blood wine. A bottle of Wee Bairns, according to what's left of the label. Deltai ice in red and blue blends. A keg of IPA, whatever that is. Half a crate of romulan ale," he reads off. "Everything else on the list seems to be ferengi juice or still in storage out back."  
  
"Cthdozi," Deanna says, pointing to the mauve liquid the shade of which might be described as radioactively luminescent. "I remember getting very drunk on that after my mother gave me the Talk." She smiles, signalling that he should pour the stuff.  
  
"The Talk?"  
  
"The Talk," she corrects the emphasis. "Sex."  
  
"Ahhh. That Talk," he chuckles.  
  
"She was very explicit."  
  
"Your mother never does anything by halves," Will answers, handing her the glass. "What was it in particular?"  
  
"Telepathic visual learning aids."  
  
"Ah," he smirks. "Cheers."  
  
"Ieluti."  
  
Their glasses clink with the particular note of terran leaded crystal.  
  
"I've never looked at a watermelon in the same way ever since."  
  
Will splutters and favours her with a rueful look. "You did that deliberately!"  
  
Deanna just smiles. "So, any ideas?  
  
"I thought perhaps we could start things off with a tour o--"  
  
"Will, you're a wonderful man and a credit to our shared species, but a tour?" Deanna tries to put as much pained boredom into that last word as she possibly can. "I can't think of anything more boring!"  
  
"What's wrong with a tour?" Will shoots back defensively, topping up both glasses. "There's always the 'gee-whiz' factor of a new ship that attracts people, and the _Sovereign_ hasn't been anywhere near these parts."  
  
"When you get down to it, one Federation starship is much like another. It's the people, not the warp core or the go faster stripes-"  
  
That infamous smirk is plastered across Will's face. "'Go faster stripes'?" he repeats.  
  
"Archaic betazoid term," comes the explanation, followed by another drink. "Point is, the Starfleet people would have seen it all before, and the Bandai would say a broken... a broken stick was epoch defining high art if they thought it would get them into the Federation any faster."  
  
"Not the most diplomatic way to put it," Will muses, sipping his drink thoughtfully. "Alright, no tour then." He shrugs in the mellow kind of way the liqueur. "What about a band?"  
  
"I think Ensign Tomel might be interested. He and some other junior officers were... what do they call it... in one of the theatres a few nights ago and he was really good."  
  
"Jamming," he supplies, refilling her glass again.  
  
"Such an odd word," Deanna reflects, swirling her finger in the slightly viscous fluid, licking it clean. Then suddenly she looks up at her friend, her fellow officer, her ex-lover. "Do you think we'll pull while we're here?"  
  
An eyebrow hovers upwards, a look of bemused surprise accompanying it. "Perhaps," he answers before half draining his glass, taking a deep breath immediately after. "Wow."  
  
A girlish giggle. "You look like your brain exploded."  
  
"Now I see why you drank this stuff after that talk," he laughs, looking at the bottle, then sighing a little. "I think we're in the prelude to something, Deanna. I don't know why, I most definitely don't know what, but my gut tells me something troublesome is about to come over the horizon. We're sat here on a brand new ship, getting drunk, and nothing. No distress calls, no weird anomalies, no vital diplomatic mission, no You Know Who, just a victory lap to show we're back in the saddle after falling down and going boom." He drains the rest of his glass, takes another deep breath, and places it heavily on the bar.  
  
"I thought I was the one who sensed things," she smiles, touching his hand, trying to lighten his sudden sombreness. Cthdozi could do that too.  
  
Shrugging, Will places his other hand over hers and squeezes back. "Call it First Officer's intuition meets the Law of Averages," he says. "Nothing for it but wait. Anyhow, about the food..."  
  
\---  
  
To Be Continued...


	3. Chapter 3

Return to Farpoint   
Chapter 3  
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-  


 Early afternoon sunlight the colour of clover honey bathes the buildings and parks of Farpoint, a luminescent syrup in contrast to the brilliance beyond the umbra and the penumbra created by the platform in orbit over the city.

Neither the nature of the light nor the object causing it had been part of the original blueprints of Farpoint. Even the revisions made by the Starfleet Corps of Engineers before construction began were lacking what has become an integral part of the spaceport city.

The closest anyone has come to a definite point of origin is "It's Not From Around Here". An ancient artifact of alien science and purpose, tumbling out of the great void between galaxies.

Any other time the science teams would have been creaming themselves in glee but not then: it had been detected by chance, coming in on a terminal trajectory from above the plane of the ecliptic. Phasers couldn't cut it, gravitons had just slid mockingly off it, and there wasn't enough available antimatter in the entire sector to knock it far enough off course to do any good.

Mkaela had arrived a week before she'd been scheduled to take over command of Farpoint so she'd have a leisurely time to get to know the place. Most of that time had instead seen her leading an away team that somehow to desperately gimmick a way inside. Faced with ancient security programmes threatening them at each step, they'd managed to decipher the basics of its operating systems and park it in orbit above the planet with almost a whole day to spare. A baptism by fire, the departing Commander Shagun had called it. Maddyn had described it to her sardonically at the time as the usual last-minute seat-of-the-pants stunt from Miracles-Are-Us.

It had taken three days after disaster had been averted for Zorn to grow a spine and use the Federation's own laws to claim the alien station as Bandai property. Though he'd almost folded when the negotiators had said it might cause issues with entry into the Federation, he'd found the hunger that had fed his people's deception with the captured alien: the station was leverage he could use to win a better deal for his world. Oh, how the Admiralty had fumed and fussed and blustered at that, never once realising that Mkaela had helped map out the entire game plan. Or maybe they had eventually twigged some time later and that's why they'd never bumped up her rank.

In the end though, as she'd known they would, they'd recognised the wisdom and efficiencies of using existing infrastructure by housing the engineering and science teams to Farpoint. It gave the Bandai the commerce they desperately needed to dig themselves out of their rut, sidestepped the problems of moving the artifact with the ability of going to warp, and kept it somewhere convenient should something go wrong... or the original owners ever came looking for their property.

Her reasons for keeping it here had been entirely personal. Her people had been injured and killed getting into that thing; there was no way she was going to have its secrets uncovered anywhere else. And what secrets they'd been. Only now they don't matter any more. Coup had been counted, but in the end the Artifact had claimed one last victory. The death of her marriage is not an injury she cares to avenge.

_Alex again_ , she sighs, turning away from the vista of the city to face the inside of her temporary quarters once more.

Even though the sunlight filtering through the strangely translucent bioskin of the station above serves only to remind her of Alex, of the pain burning deep inside, she still finds it incredibly beautiful. This apartment, however... It looks so... sparse, so... generic, so... so utterly without soul.

Here, there is nothing to speak of love, of life, or of the past. Here, there are none of those little alterations that turn places such as these into homes. Here, there is only a shoulder bag and two shipping crates full of everything she owns. After everything, to have only this... These few things, and memories of love forever tainted by betrayal...

It just doesn't seem at all worth it.

"Computer, darken windows seventy percent," she orders. "Decrease lighting to twenty five percent. Direct all non-priority calls to my message bank."

"Working," it responds in a voice of eternal calm.

Something like dusk descends throughout the room as Mkaela pulls her new combadge off and, looking at the chronometer in the back of it, rests the device on the table next to her earring. So few people these days understand her desire, her need, inherited from her father, to look at the time instead of just asking the nearest voice link for it. Alex had understood her visual nature so very well...

"You'll get over it," she says quietly to herself. "You got over the others, you'll get over this." The tremble in her voice threatens to make a liar of her. A deep breath to calm herself, a second for good measure. Then she goes on.

"Computer, time to _Enterprise_ ETA?"

"Ninety-one minutes, twenty-eight seconds."

Nodding to herself, Mkaela strips off her uniform for the last time. She folds it neatly from force of habit, straightening all the creases, giving it a last brush down. Of the many she's worn, this one has been her favourite, but with the coming of the Enterprise it's time has finally expired. Resting her underthings upon the folded uniform, she carries the clothes into the bathroom, an ancient Bajora melody on her lips.

She is greeted by the purple-orange light of a hundred chelbeh candles reflecting off the tropical stillness of the bath water, and the spicy scent of ritual herbs that have been infusing within that stillness for the past hour. Breathing deeply, Mkaela stands upon the threshold for a while, letting the smells and the warmth flow over her and into her, still humming that melody.

Carefully she places her clothes on the ground and steps over them, reaching for the simple wooden flask sitting upon the vanity unit. The action is reflected in the mirror that acts as ritual observer in this ancient rite of her people. Kissing the flask, tasting fleetingly the faint bitterness of the wood, she empties its contents onto the clothes. When the final drop of oil has fallen, she drops the flask too; it strikes the material with a small, wet exhalation of sound.

"Prophets, hear my prayers," she calls out, her voice almost too loud for the quietness around her as she looks towards the distant world of her birth. Or at least where the computer has told her it is. "What is, is. What will be, will be." Carefully, she picks up the nearest candle. "Bear witness as I offer you my past in hopes of a new future."

Moving backwards, she drops the candle. The flame almost vanishes before it touches the potent vapours of the kahiba oil, and with a great exhalation erupts in a magnificent burst of flickering magenta. Leaving the clothes to burn, Mkaela turns and steps into the water. Once again she luxuriates in the sensations involved in this for a moment before she continues.

The water laps gently at her thighs as she slowly kneels, the ripples of that movement making the reflections upon the water's surface dance like dervishes.

"Prophets, watch over me as I wash away the stains of my journey in preparation for the new road I take." The water she collects in her hands is dark with the herbs required for the ritual, herbs which make her skin tingle wherever the water touches.

In silence, she bathes herself. The temptation to remain here, to succumb to the simple pleasure of warm water cascading down her body, is strong. But she resists, ducking her head beneath the surface and keeping it there for as long as she can easily manage, curling herself into a ball so that she is completely submerged. Time slows in the wombish embrace of the water, this warm darkness she does not open her eyes to alleviate. Instead, she focuses that darkness inwards, letting her conscious awareness of her life and her sense of self dissipate as the pressure against her lungs builds.

_Breathe_ , some dark little part of her psyche whispers. _Let it in. End the pain_. Part of her soul wants to listen it.

_No._

 

_You know you want to._

 

_No._

 

_End the suffering with one final burst of pain._

 

_No._

There is a roaring in her ears as she erupts from the water, splashing hard enough to douse a good score of the candles nearest her. Panting, she slumps forward, resting her head upon her arms upon the edge of the bath.

The sound resolves itself into the throbbing hum of the extractor fan diligently venting the smoke from the room. Against that noise is the irritating chirrup of her combadge repeatedly begging for her attention. She ignores it, reluctantly pulling herself out of the water. Keeping to the ritual, she carefully sluices herself dry with a special cloth set aside for just this purpose. In low tones, she utters a prayer of thanks to the Prophets for watching over her, wringing the cloth out over the smouldering remains of her uniform, dousing whatever embers might be lingering. Hair still damp, she blows out the candles still alight before finally moving into the living area.

Only now does a sense of urgency inform her movements as she answers the incoming call, irritated but not letting it show.

"This is Keri. Go."

"Commander, we were getting worried," the voice on the other end declares. "I know you asked not to be interrupted, but you also told us to notify you when the _Enterprise_ entered final orbit."

"Can't that ship ever be on time?" she asks, looking at the back of her combadge. "Zane handled all the pleasantries?"

"Affirmative ma'am. Captain Picard awaits your communication at your convenience."

_Damn right he does!_ she thinks irritably. "Thank you, Lieutenant. Keri out."

Putting her earring back on, she moves across to her shoulder bag and pulls it open. Within rests the latest iteration of the Starfleet uniform, black and grey with a divisional colour tunic. It seems and feels more sombre, more weighty, than the red shouldered one she has just burnt in votive offering. It's why she's resisted wearing it until now, until there was no choice.

Some minutes later, Mkaela is dressed and out of her temporary quarters, running perfunctory fingers through the practical shortness of her hair as she walks without too much haste towards the turbolift. The _Enterprise_ may have broken protocol and been early, but it doesn't mean she can keep its captain waiting forever.

Unfortunately.

Arriving in Ops, she again closes her office wall before placing the call, composing herself in the time it takes the windowed wall-panels to complete their movement.

"Ah, Commander..." Picard begins only a beat after his face appears on her desk screen, the light twitch of his lips suggesting he only just barely avoided an obvious faux pas over her suddenly revised marital status. From what she can make out from the tight focus of the image, he appears to be in his ready room rather than on the bridge.

"Captain. Picard," she answers, keeping her tone formal, her expression light, as she makes the subtle statement that she noticed the omission. "I trust nothing untimely has happened since we spoke this morning?"

He doesn't obviously react to either probe. "Not at all, Commander," he smiles back. "I've scheduled that reception you suggested for nineteen-thirty hours local time. I trust that doesn't pose any inconvenience for you, or your people?"

"Not at all," she smiles, feeling a little guilty. But only a very little bit.

"Excellent. I shall see you then." For a moment he looks away over the top of the camera, then back to her. "Good day, Commander Keri."

"Captain Picard," she acknowledges. The professional smile drops the moment the screen blanks. Like Zorn, there's something about Picard that sets her on edge, but it's an effect very different to the one the Groppler creates. But soon enough neither man is going to be her problem.

Leaning back as far as her chair will let her, Mkaela grins at the thought, her mood lifted before it can settle in. To be responsible solely for herself again, if only for a while. Oh, the freedom embodied in that simple phrase! No orders to give, none to follow, no worrying about the well-being of the people under her command. Just her and...

Just her.

Just.

It's time to do something about Alex. Once and for all.

 

 

* * *

Even in a world of matter transmission, there is still need for the ubiquitous vehicle that is the shuttle craft.

Farpoint's eight shuttle pads can be found on the edge of the city at each of the traditional cardinal points. It's a safety thing: a shuttle crashing or exploding here will risk fewer lives than if such a calamity were to take place in the heart of the city.

The southern-most of these pads is currently the only one in use as the sun sinks beneath the eastern horizon. A handful of ground crew, illuminated by the actinic glare of the pad's stadium lighting and the strobing of the visual beacons built into the fusion-formed tarmac, busy themselves flight checking a small shuttle pod, the name _Mariel_ written upon the snub-nosed prow.

"Thanks for the lift," Maddyn says as he emerges from the base of the pad's control tower and the complex buried beneath it.

"I need to keep my hand in," Mkaela answers from behind him with a little shrug.They're both wearing the new grey shouldered duty uniforms now, a matching pair again. Or as closes as Medical and Command can come to it. He'd changed as soon as they'd been given the option; they just looked much nicer. And the dress uniform they'd be wearing tomorrow? What. A. Godsend

"Yeah, right," he snorts good naturedly, giving his slightly taller friend a companion-able hug as she draws next to him. "The only thing that stopped you being a pilot was that you liked building things and taking them apart even more."

"You think you know me so well," she replies archly, the big grin that he's been missing for the past two days finally making a return.

He's tempted to suspect it's a little too soon, that her characteristic slow burn has been and gone far too quickly. There's no sign of the cold fury and hollow sadness of a few hours ago when she and Alex had stood before the Judge Advocate General and, despite Alex's pleas for a chance at redemption, mutually witnessed the final dissolution of their marriage. An hour's cathartic violence in the holodeck afterwards followed by a few waves of the dermal regenerator over her knuckles seems to have returned her to equilibrium.

Still...

A few subtle probes of surface emotions, a hummingbird quick taste of her ambient mental aura, fails to uncover any fault lines ready to rupture. Maybe she is over the worst of it all. He hopes so.

"You know why," he scolds as the techs acknowledge their presence with various curt body motions. "I'm a ground pounder. Always will be."

"Commander, your chariot awaits," Prohaska, the horta warrant officer running the ground crew, reports as the two of them approach. The synthetic voice generated by the ruggedized translator embedded in her knobbly teflon-coated carapace doesn't do much to occlude the deep rumblings and strange odours that comprise the physical aspect of the alien's native language. The psychic aspect it doesn't handle at all.

_//Ground pounder?//_ the crew chief ponders the term 'aloud'. If the species had anything resembling a humanoid body structure, he figures he'd be looking at a head cocked to one side. What is this?

"Thanks Chief," Mkaela answers, bending down and patting one of the chief's veinerious looking external structures. As chief medical officer, he knows the gesture translates into something roughly equivalent to the humanoid tendency to clasp someone on the shoulder in gratitude and recognition.

_//Means I don't work off the ground if I can help it,//_ Maddyn answers as Mkaela boards the shuttle pod. / _/I like my world solid.//_

_//This is very sensible, Healer. But if we were always sensible, we would never leave home and know only what we touch.//_

"Madd, you coming?"

Giving himself a little shake, he waves to Prohaska and slips into the shuttle pod beside Mkaela.

"Sealing hatches," she announces, as much to him as to the voice-link open to the control tower. "Board checks as green."

"Affirmative, shuttle pod _Mariel_ ," the man at the other end of the voice-link answers. "Our screens show you locked up and green." He sounds perhaps as old as twenty, but it's always hard to tell.

"Confirm flight plan uplink to _Enterprise_ ," she orders, leaning over him to hit a button. Then a whispered aside: "You need to actually learn to fly stick."

"I prefer being chauffeured as befits my noble station," Maddyn answers with a rakishly expression as he opens his jacket. Mkaela rolls her eyes.

"Uplink conformed," the tower answers. "MetSat's picking up a storm front developing off the Cape of Bright Hope, but you shouldn't have to worry about unless you return early."

"Acknowledged," she says, a soft thrum spreading through the shuttlepod to the accompaniment of a bass line rumble that quickly drops below the subsonic. "Engine core shows green. Initiating anti-grav thrusters." There's a slight lurch as the pod begins to rise.

"We show you green," the tower tells them. "Reaching impulse ignition point in eight seconds. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. You are cleared for impulse ignition."

"Impulse engines engaged," she reports, the thrum becoming slightly more noticeable until Mkaela adjusts the IDF settings a notch. "See you later on, Control."

"Safe skies, Commander."

Maddyn peers out the cockpit window as the shuttle pod banks away from Farpoint to face the oncoming night.

"It's just occurred to me that you've never explained why you don't like transporters," Mkaela remarks conversationally, but in that particular tone that means she's been thinking about the subject a while.

The darkness outside grows more intense as they head further to the south-west.

"You've said it's not liking the idea of being disassembled and reassembled atom by atom, which is fair enough. You're far from the only person, let alone the only medic in the Fleet, with that attitude." She turns to face him. "I've never really asked myself why that is, because people have hang-ups about things all the time, like me and my time pieces. I've got some ideas why but I've never really asked you because we usually each respect the other's privacy — and because when there's a life to be saved you've never hesitated to be the first one onto the pad if we've had to beam out."

"But now you're shipping out and if things go the way they look, we might never see each other again." Maddyn's expression turns sombre. "Transporters and I have a bad history," he explains as his friend makes a small adjustment to their flight path, riding the edge of a large pocket of air turbulence so that it barely shivers their vessel. "Have you ever seen what happens when matter transmission goes wrong?"

She shakes her head. "Not really. Back when I went through the Academy my instructor in that particular subject wasn't the sort who went into that kind of detail because, well, it wasn't something we could do anything about. You stop it before it becomes a problem or make sure it doesn't continue to be a problem."

"They use a holodeck to show it to you when you do your medical training. Every single possible malfunction, real or theoretical." Maddyn closes his eyes at the memory of it. "It's worse than when they show you the cadavers, because dead bodies are at least identifiable as bodies. It's the most fervent wish of any medic never to have to see that sort of disaster for real." Another brief pause. "I've seen it in the field, for real, three times. And each time there was nothing I could do." Not exactly true, but he'd had no regrets about pulling the trigger except having to do it. "The statistical probability of that is angled sharply towards the near absurd."

"I'm sorry," Mkaela says, touching his shoulder. He can feel her reaction too, the myriad different emotions his story stirs in her, the scattered memories they bring bobbing briefly to the surface. There's one that deeply ingrained instinct jerks him away from almost before he even realises it's been and gone; something from her life before Starfleet.

It's times like these he envies those who live in mental silence.

"So, that's the new _Sovereign_ class is it?" he asks, looking to break the mood. Ahead of them, he can make out the shape of a starship hard-docked to the alien platform above the city.

"Oh, yes," Mkaela answers him, returning her attentions to the control board. The moment is gone, and they both know they won't speak about it again. He opens up a display window on the systems control panel and magnifies the ship for them both to look at.

"It's a nice enough looking ship I guess," she shrugs after tracing the lines of the ship with a finger, as if trying to ignite a memory without quite realising it.

"Reminds me of the old _Excelsiors_ they've still got running around in a way."

"If you say so."

"I've been itching to see the medical facilities for this class in action," he mock-confides to her. "I hear they're even better than what I'm running with. Given a starship's limitations, of course."

"Oh, of course," she grins.

"Hrmm. I wonder if they've organised a tour."

 

\---

 

To Be Continued...


	4. Chapter 4

Return to Farpoint   
Chapter 4  
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Image: Ten Forward and the reception within. Starfleet officers, Federation dignitaries, Bandai notables. All chatting. All drinking...  
  
Light flares brightly white. Darkness.  
  
Image: Ten Forward and the reception within. Everyone turning as she and Maddyn are escorted inside by an Andorian ensign. Everyone nodding as they are introduced to the people they don't know...  
  
Light flares brightly white. Darkness.  
  
Image: Ten Forward and the reception within. Fake smile as Picard steers her towards the dignitaries. A human-looking ensign with green hair approaching with a tray of drinks...  
  
A babble of sound begins to play as a soundtrack to... Darkness.  
  
Image: Ten Forward and the reception within. Syrupy bitter-sweetness filling her mouth and sliding down her throat. The inhomidiness of the Saurian ambassador's face as shi blinks hir huge yellow eyes in greeting...  
  
Babble underscored by a liquid roaring that ebbs and flows. Darkness.  
  
Image: Ten Forward and the reception within. Her fingers spasming open. Her glass frozen in that moment before freefall. Someone's cry of alarm. Hers.  
  
Sudden blinding pain turning the darkness blood green. Silence.  
  
Image: Ten Forward and the reception within. The sound of shattering glass. Pain. Intense, incredible pain, as she falls...  
  
Everything returns, tearing away the darkness and the silence.  
  
Image: Ten Forward and the reception within. Everything goes numb. All sensation leeches away. The face of a Celestine wreathed in the holy fire of the Temple of the Prophets. Darkness....  
  
Mkaela sits upright with a strangled cry of terror, lungs fighting that exhalation of sound as they suck in the overly scrubbed starship air as though it is the purest elixir. It's a purely autonomic response that doubles her over barely a second later, coughing harshly.  
  
Two pairs of hands, strong in that special manner that only a doctor's can be, find places to support her as the coughing fit passes. She waves them away then, making them leave her bent double and draped over her knees as she regains her breath. All she remembers from the brief instant her eyes were open is an intense blur of light.  
  
"What happened?" she finally asks, eyes still closed but aware that she is most likely in the sick bay of the Enterprise because this doesn't smell like Maddyn's domain.. "I died, didn't I?"  
  
"Yes," two voices reply together in that way that means they didn't mean to. One male, one female. One Maddyn's, the other she again guesses belongs to the Enterprise. The last member of the ship's command crew that she was to have been introduced to after the dignitaries.  
  
"It's her infirmary, Madd," Mkaela scolds, curtailing the clash of medical egos before they can start staking their claim over her. Taking one last deep breath before leaning back and discovering someone has raised the biobed to turn it into a seat. She doesn't complain; skirting so close to death would take it out of a Vulcan.  
  
And she's no Vulcan.  
  
"Thank you," the woman says, sounding bemused as she reaches in to remove the little devices attached to Mkaela forehead and above her heart. It's then that she realises that her jacket and tunic have both been destructively opened. Still feeling weak, Mkaela can do little more than process the fact it's something that's happened.  
  
"So?" Mkaela prompts, opening the first crack in her eyelids, allowing her eyes to adjust to the brightness of light endemic to Starfleet medical facilities everywhere. Her returning sense narrows down that difference in scents to the doctor's perfume. Something about it reminds her of a home long since gone, uncertain touches and things in all the right places.  
  
"You suffered a massive anaphylactic shock," the woman explains."Whatever it was you were drinking--"  
  
"Cthdozi," Maddyn interrupts. "It's a Betazoid liqueur. Never liked the stuff." Mkaela opens her eyes a little more as he speaks, making out the albedo of the curved walls and the shapes of the biobeds erected in front of them.  
  
"Well, whatever it's called, something in it fatally disagreed with your unusual biology. I've got Ogawa running the tests to determine exactly what. If it'd been synthahol, there probably wouldn't have been a problem." There's a warmth in the woman's voice. "But I wouldn't put that assumption to the test just yet."  
  
"So I'll live?" Mkaela jokes, opening her eyes all the way and looks up.  
  
Looks into the face of a Celestine, one of those who have ascended to live with the Prophets in their Temple. The Celestine that was there when she died. The one whom, it would seem, had bought her back.  
  
"Provided you steer clear of cthdozi," the redhead smiles. As she turns away to tap her her combadge, Mkaela is suddenly grateful for the darkness of her skin: any lighter and the sudden surge of green to her cheeks would be painfully, embarrassingly, obvious.  
  
"Crusher to Picard."  
  
Deep inside, Mkaela feels the desire to stroke aside the long strand of flame red hair that brushes against the doctor's cheek and kiss the soft skin that hair touches...  
  
"Picard here," the captain's voice, laced with concern, erupts into fills the room. "Is the Commander alright?"  
  
...And from her cheek, to move her lips upwards to kiss the lids of this Celestine's eyes, this incredible beauty with the discordantly violent name.  
  
"She's fine, Captain," Crusher answers, her voice matching the very genuine smile of relief touching her lips. "It was simply a bad allergic reaction to a something she drank."  
  
 _//Down girl,//_ Maddyn's mind-voice whispers, humour and caution both lacing the mental communion.  
  
 _//She's beautiful, Madd,//_ she thinks back, knowing that her friend will be reading her enough to pick it up. _//She saved my life.//_  
  
"What's her condition?" Picard's voice returns. "Everyone here is understandably concerned."  
  
 _//Exactly,//_ Maddyn points out. _//You're grateful, you're getting over--//_  
  
 _//Exactly!//_ she thinks, shooting Maddyn a brief glare to accompany her pointed reply. _//I'm over moping about Alex, about the hurt and the sadness and everything else. All I want to have is a little bit of fun, Madd, before I go. And if I can I want to have it with her.//_  
  
"I'd like to keep her here for observation," Crusher informs all of them, turning to Mkaela and Maddyn as she says this. "She should be on her feet again in a few hours."  
  
 _//And if she's already with someone?//_  
  
"Thank you, Doctor Crusher, I'll pass on the good news. Picard out."  
  
"Doctor Blaen, I can't thank you enough for getting me Commander Keri's biodata," Crusher smiles before turning to Mkaela. "I've never seen biology quite like yours before. And I've come across my fair share of cross-species progeny."  
  
"There were only three of us," she answers regretfully. "Fighting with the--' She has to bite back the racial slur "--the Cardassians and the evacuations separated us. As far as I know, I'm the last."  
  
"That's terrible," Crusher says, sitting on the edge of Mkaela's bed. "I do know a little of what it's like to be alone like that." The unsolicited comment is surprising but in the circumstances not unwelcome.  
  
"You get used to it," Mkaela shrugs. "They were part of my life growing up, important for being different from everyone else in the same way I was. But that was a long time ago, and that's the point, really. They've been absent so long I have to really want to remember them, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they sleep in my mind, and I do sort of forget because there's so much else to think about. And do. And feel."  
  
"Memory's funny like that," Crusher agrees. "A moment's thought can have a whole universe of consequences."   
   
"Bad memories of your own?" Mkaela asks, mostly rhetorically even though she notices the sudden melancholy colouring her saviour's tone.  
  
"It was an accident," explains Crusher after a brief pause, seeming perhaps a little surprised herself to be telling the story to someone she's just met. "I was caught up in a bubble universe created by a warp experiment." Her features cloud as she recalls the experience. "As strange as it sounds, and there really isn't any easy explanation, that universe was predicated on what I'd been thinking of at the time, which was people disappearing from our lives. It all seemed normal at first, then as the bubble collapsed people started disappearing. Utterly. No one else had any memories of them, even if they'd only just been talking to them. I was the only one who noticed, because I wasn't meant to be there. It was so terrifying, I thought I was going mad."   
  
Crusher shivers a little, and Mkaela reaches over and squeezes her hand without realising she's doing it until too late. She's a little surprised, a little thrilled, when after a beat the squeeze is absently returned.  
  
"Eventually, I was quite literally the only person in the universe. I almost went with it before Wes and the others rescued me. I know it's nothing like what you must have been through with the Cardassians but..." The remembered melancholy evaporates and the celestial warmth of her smile returns. "So, every so often, I check up with the family and friends I don't talk to as much as I might like. And Wes drops by occasionally, when he's not out hopping galaxies."  
  
"Doctor, do you mind if Mkaela and I have a word alone?" Maddyn says, grabbing the conversation before Mkaela can do or say anything more. She avoids looking at him, knowing she'll only glare.  
  
"Sure," she smiles, getting to her feet. "I'll just chase up Alyssa for those test results."  
  
"Madd, stop riding me!" Mkaela snaps in irritation the second the doors close behind Crusher and her shapely behind.   
  
"Whoa!" Maddyn holds up his hands. "I'm just making a graceful exit." He flashes her a smile. "I happen to know when I can't win."  
  
"You're point?" she asks, still irritable.  
  
"Well," he says, leaning in and adopting his best conspiratorial gossip expression. "While you two were having your little natter, I was talking to the ship's counsellor — the Deanna Troi that Picard introduced you to just before your little turn. She's Fifth House, I'm Ninth, so our families know each other, you see."  
  
"Telepathically, I assume?"  
  
"Of course. And according to her, there's something of an off-again on-again thing between Captain Picard and your heavenly angel."  
  
"And she just volunteered this information?" The hint of a smile on her lips, though, belies the dubiousness in her voice: Maddyn has the most remarkable ability to get information out of people.  
  
"Actually, yes. You should know by now we Betazoids love finding out about relationships." He chuckles. "You might even call it an obligation, when you belong to one of the royal Houses." He grins triumphantly. "It slipped out when I was asking if there were anyone she knew amongst the ship's upper echelons who might be interested in a fling."  
  
"You're right. It doesn't surprise me at all." She rolls her eyes, offering a small smile. "Go and enjoy the reception, Madd. I'm sure I saw some good looking bloke with a beard making eyes in your direction before I passed out."  
  
"I'll bet," he grins, rubbing his hands together. "You've got to admit, I am ravishingly good looking for my age."  
  
Mkaela pokes her friend in the belly. "Then go get ravished. I'll be fine."  
  
"I know you will," he says, hugging her fondly. It's times like this, when she really needs him, that she is glad that they've never let sex interfere with their friendship. His lips are warm against the skin just above her ridges when he kisses her good night. "I'll see you tomorrow."  
  
"Go!" she orders good naturedly, pushing him away towards the door. "And that's an order, Doctor Blaen."  
  
"Yes Ma'am!" he salutes humorously before slipping outside.  
  
Mkaela yawns a little. Maddyn's a good sort, even if he is prone to dipping his oar in a little too much because he cares. At least, he knows when to back off.  
  
She hopes.  
  
 _//Oh, the point I was going to make before you distracted me is that they're currently off again.//_ And with that Maddyn drops the connection.  
  
Mkaela hurls a pillow at the door before laughing ruefully.  
  


* * *

  
Beverly looks about the compact space of the transporter room and finds herself wishing for the congenial features and boyish smile of Miles O'Brien instead of the placid features of the young vulcan currently standing at the controls. He'd always been good for a game of darts now and then, a game she'd learnt from Jack back when they were courting each other.  
  
"Will you be beaming down alone, Commander?" he asks, only half looking up from the diagnostic he seems to be running. Even then, his dark eyes seem to evaluate her with a disconcerting thoroughness.  
  
"I'm waiting for Counsellor Troi," she answers, an automatic semi-smile accompanying her words.  
  
The ensign nods, not an iota of movement from the dark cap that is his hair.  
  
On cue, Deanna skips in just then, looking particularly well groomed. Flashing a casual smile at the ensign, she turns to Beverly. "Ready?"  
  
"Long ago," she answers back, leading the way to the platform. "Let me guess: Bon Mott's?"  
  
"How'd you guess?"  
  
Beverly tuts in mock reproach. "You always look this way when you go there."  
  
"Destination?" the ensign asks, indifferent to their banter.  
  
"Anu'zbra Court," Deanna answers for her.  
  
He feeds the name into the computer, which spits out coordinates for him in the space of a heart beat. "Energizing."  
  
That familiar tingle takes hold of her, travelling inwards towards her core as the world becomes a chaotic swirl of colours moving to the sound of quantum harmonics. It lasts an eternity of seconds, then  vanishes, leaving the two of them standing in the middle of a plaza.  
  
"It doesn't look any different," Beverly remarks in quiet surprise, looking around at the curving white architecture, the lush gardens, and the people moving amongst them all. "Look, I think that's even the same merchant that sold me the cloth I made that dress you liked so much from."  
  
Deanna nods, shielding her eyes from the morning sun peeking over the western horizon. "I never had much of a chance to look around the original," she answers with a little shrug that might almost be described as envious. "At least, not the way you did."  
  
Beverly looks around, only half listening as she gets her bearings from a map ten years old and purely in her mind. "There's a little Enebrian cafe about five minutes walk that way." She points north.  
  
The two women set off down the plaza. However it takes considerably longer than five minutes to reach the cafe, as they stop to look in the window of each shop they pass by, gawking amiably at all the pretty things and laughing at the odd ones. When they do reach the cafe, they sit at one of its round tables and peruse the holographic menu projected into the air between them.  
  
"So, Beverly, are you going to tell me what happened?" Deanna asks after the waiter takes their order to the kitchen. "I've sensed it bubbling away at the back of your mind since before we beamed down."  
  
"Well," the doctor answers, drawing out the word. "The men in our lives. Will and Jean Luc. They're not exactly the men in our lives, are they?"  
  
Deanna cocks her head a little. "How so?"  
  
Beverly ponders a moment, trying to find the words she needs. "We have feelings for them, and they have feelings for us in return. We're all of us free agents, romantically speaking, but we know that deep down we want them and we hope they want us in the same way."  
  
"We're each other's end-game. You've got me so far."  
  
"You remember when Jean Luc and I were kidnapped and had those things attached to us?"  
  
Deanna nods. "And you knew what the other was thinking?"  
  
"Yes. We drifted apart after that because we were afraid of those feelings we had, and that the other knew how intense they were. But then, shortly before Worf got his promotion to Lieutenant Commander, Jean-Luc and I, we... Things _deepened_ between us. We grew closer than we'd ever been." And then, the smile turns downwards. "But then, almost straight away, his family died and what we had was gone again. It's like with you and Will: it... things between he and I ebb and flow. And we never seem able to quite match the other's tide."  
  
Another understanding nod on Deanna's part, even though Beverly knows her friend is well aware of all this and is indulging Beverly's need to contextualise. She leans ever so slightly closer to the empath.  
  
"It took me a long time to get over Jack, and if he wants to go the stoic route I'm not going to force the issue. But, Deanna," she sighs, "it's beginning to wear on me. We might be each other's endgame, but right now I want some emotional certainty in my life that isn't 'wait and see'."  
  
The waiter returns, laden with all manner of scrumptious things only two of which are for them. For Deanna there's, predictably, something made with chocolate and the chocolate analogues from 7 different worlds that is inexplicably called a 'genesis'; perhaps it loses something in the translation. Beverly is presented with a wedge of orange cake smothered in a thick redberry sauce and encrusted with flakes of almond. Both portions are big enough to be considered main meals: one of the reasons Beverly swears by the hospitality of the Enebrians.  
  
Conversation stops for a little while. Food this good, after all, is so difficult to talk around without ruining the experience. Eventually though, the women do once more find the desire to speak of more mundane things like Beverly's romantic ambitions.  
  
"So, you're afraid of your history," Deanna sums up her friend's feelings with practised skill. She sucks a stray tendril of chocolatey goo from a finger as she makes the various deductions permitted by Beverly's affirmative nod. "You haven't mentioned either Odan or Ronin, both of whom were, to be generous, washouts. Which means you've met someone you're feeling attracted to. And given the events of last night, I think it's safe to assume that her name is Mkaela."  
  
"Am I that obvious?" Beverly asks, feeling herself blush ever so slightly. _Discretion is meant to be one of my fortes._  
  
"I could say yes," her dark haired friend smiles ever so wickedly, "because I'm a member of the damn Sciences division and a fucking excellent detective as befits my job. But the truth is that Doctor Blaen and I are also fantastic wingladies and traded relationship histories for the two of you."  
  
"Deanna!" Beverly exclaims, mortified and embarrassed. "I can't believe you did that!"  
  
"Force of habit," Deanna gives a sorry-not-sorry apology. "Betazoids can't stop themselves finding out about relationships and helping them along when we're living in close pathic proximity to them. I mean, hello, have you met my mother?" The face she makes when mentioning the current holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx brings an involuntary smile to Beverly's face. "He's genuinely concerned for Mkaela. They've been friends ever since she arrived here and he doesn't want her to get hurt."  
  
"That's still no reason for you to go telling him about the disaster that's been my love life post-Jack!" Beverly protests, shaking her spoon at her friend irritably.  
  
"At least you know the attraction's mutual," Deanna offers before stuffing a piece of genesis into her own mouth to momentarily forestall any more talk.  
  
Beverly finds herself halted in mid-tirade. She turns the notion over in her head for a moment, tasting it, sniffing for possibilities. "Mutual?"  
  
"Uhuh," Deanna mumbles stickily, waving her fingers in that vaguely circular manner some people do without quite realising it when they're trying to force what's in their mouth into their stomach so they can speak sooner. "Very. She's just come out of a divorce and is looking for a little bit of guilt free fun, and Maddyn was worried that you might totally brush her off, or else fall utterly and totally in love with her."  
  
Finding herself again unsure of what to say, she follows Deanna's tactic and takes a big bite of her cake.  
  
It doesn't quite work.  
  
"You're looking for a break from this off-again, on-again thing with the Captain and you evidently don't want to get into a relationship. Commander Keri's wants the catharsis of a farewell hookup before she ditches this place. You both clearly have a physical attraction to the other." Deanna leans in again, the perfect confidante, the personification of the devil and angel perching on Bev's shoulders. "It's perfect. Something for both of you, with no guilt or strings attached. Of course, if you don't think you have it in you..."  
  
Beverly hits her square between the eyes with a flaked almond. "Oh, make no mistake you terrible pimp: having it in me is definitely on the table."  
  
\---  
  
To Be Continued...


	5. Chapter 5

Return to Farpoint  
Chapter 5  
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"Commander," an ensign calls out for Mkaela's attention.  
  
Given that she has only paperwork — funny how such an arcane expression manages to so well sum up the banality of the task — to occupy her when the call is uttered, her attention is easily snared. He looks to be an utterly average example of his species and gender, and so unfamiliar that he has to be a new posting.  
  
"Yes, Ensign...?" she asks, trying not to sound too interested in whatever it is he's reporting. Anything to remove her attention from the tendrils of bureaucracy infecting her office is readily welcome.  
  
"Lee, ma'am. The _Destiny_ has just sent us notification that she's just been delayed by a technical matter and won't be arriving for another couple of days." He manages to look slightly apologetic for the inconvenience he thinks this is going to cause her.  
  
"Doesn't anyone know how to keep to a schedule?" Mkaela protests, even though privately she finds herself a bit glad at the news. It means she has a little more time to play with Beverly Crusher, to indulge in something beyond the 'If you have a minute...' lack of time and the previous night's flirting had seen her contemplating.  
  
Lee, demonstrating wisdom that will lead to future rank, remains silent.  
  
"Just send them an acknowledgement and ask Captain !Xia to keep us posted on their status." She feels a sense of accomplish at finally getting the pronunciation correct.  
  
"Already done, Ma'am."  
  
"Good man."  
  
Mkaela returns her attention to the various PADDS strewn across her desk and the dulling array of status reports, requisitions, schedules and briefings they contain. It takes the rest of the hour until a thumb print authorises the final one.  
  
_And after tonight, it'll be months before I have to look at another one!_ she thinks triumphantly, stacking them neatly for her yeoman to collect later. "Jes," she calls, moving towards the centre of the room.  
  
"Commander?" the bandai responds, looking up from the Systems Management console. The contrast created by his newly and entirely unexpectedly pink hair is like being woken up with a bucket of freezing water.  
  
"You have the chair. Unless something important happens, I'll see you at the ceremony this afternoon."  
  
"Yes Commander."  
  
And with that, she departs Ops for what is probably the last time. It feels disconcerting to admit that and at the same time really good.  
  
Her actual long service leave is going to feel even better.  
  
As soon as she leaves the Spire and emerges into the early morning, Mkaela makes her way to the nearest supply depot and requisitions a bicycle for herself. A design found in its essence on just about every member world of the Federation, it is maybe not the most efficient means of moving any great distance within Farpoint or its immediate vicinity. Given that most of her responsibilities have been handed off to others by now, it is however quite an agreeable choice.  
  
Perhaps half her day is spent moving from location to location, sleeves rolled up and jacket stuffed in the panniers, ensuring that everything she is co-ordinating for the ceremony is in order and ready to go. And in so doing, Mkaela takes the chance to say goodbye to Farpoint a little bit at a time. The experience is bitter-sweet: although she can't wait to leave, apart from the last few days her life here has been overwhelmingly a happy one.  
  
The exercise also affords her plenty of time to think about how to approach Beverly Crusher. A score of different scenarios comes and go, ranging from the sort of smooth seduction she's always guiltily enjoyed in holodramas to awkwardly blurting out her desire over Mkaela-safe cocktails and moqabbelat.  
  
Coming across her while being something of a hot mess is not one of them. And yet there she is, coming out of a curio shop filled with some of the more esoteric trade items that have made their way to the Deneb system since the Farpoint project began in earnest. For a brief moment a wave of doubt assails Mkaela but then the two women lock eyes and there is only space in her brain for her Celestine.  
  
"Hello!" the redhead calls out, shooting a glance at the shop door she's just come out of. It's closed now, showing no sign of opening.  
  
"Hi!" Mkaela  calls back, coming to a quick stop on the other side of the boulevarde. Kicking out the stand, she dismounts as Beverly crosses over.  
  
"This is a pleasant surprise. Taking a break?"  
   
"Sort of a victory lap," she nods. "Still technically in charge but largely superfluous to things now."  
  
"We had a global pub crawl when I left Starfleet Medical for the Enterprise," Beverly blurts out. "We were chasing the sun."  
  
_We are so bad at this._  
  
Beverly starts to say something else. Fearing the worst, Mkaela just jumps in. They end up gushing at the same time. Slightly different words, but the same message.  
  
"Have dinner with me?"  
  
There's a moment of silence, then both their lips twitch.  
  
"Um, okay. Dinner. Yes." The words tumble over each other in their haste to be uttered.  
  
"How does 2100 local time sound?"  
  
"That won't give us long to get ready" Beverly gestures towards the heart of Farpoint and the imminent ceremonies there in.  
  
"I know," Mkaela says a little apologetically. "But it's not like we've got a lot of time..."  
  
"...And you want us to spend as much time together as possible," Beverly finishes the explanation. There is an emotion in her expression that Mkaela can't quite read.  
  
"Yeah," Mkaela nods, her cheeks greening ever so very slightly, aware that she's breathing more heavily now than all her bike riding can justify. "I'm sorry. It's just that... My personal life is a radioactive disaster zone right now, and I'm not looking for anything. What I mean is I don't know anything about you as a person and I'm not professing love but... I'm _really_ hot for you, Beverly. Messy fingers alone time h--"  
  
Her brain catches up with her mouth and she bites off the last word. _Why'd I go do a stupid thing like that and blurt it all out?_ she castigates herself, hoping the horror she feels isn't showing on her face but fairly certain it is. _Stupid, stupid woman._  
  
"Comman-- Mkaela," her Celestine answers after a moment and a deep breath. "I'm... Um..."  
  
A little internal sigh, one of regret and disappointment. "Look, Beverly, I'm sorry. I've offended you. I shouldn't have s--"  
  
Before she quite processes it's happening, Beverly's fingers are pressed to Mkaela's lips to silence her. "I'm not offended. I'm touched by the honesty of your desire for me. And honestly I'm in a place right now where I desire to be touched." Her hand slips from Mkaela's mouth, trails down her arm, finds her hand. Their fingers caress softly, sending a tingle of anticipation and desire course through her. "And that makes me anxious."  
  
"I don't mean to make you anxious," Mkaela half-whispers. The vestigial psychic ability Maddyn has helped her nurse is picking up a tide of little cues and sensations, signals at once so inherently familiar and so intrinsically alien. Maybe she hadn't wanted to be this aware of what must have been happening between Alex and herself. Maybe it had taken that emotional trauma to make her all the more aware of what she could read.  
  
"It's not you, Mkaela," Beverly responds in that same half-whisper, Mkaela's fingers now fully entangled with hers. "It's what you, what I, what we want. I don't know if I can give free reign to just my lust and not my heart. It's not something I've ever done before. It's not something I've wanted to do so much before."  
  
A little shyly, Mkaela brings their hands up, turning them so Beverly's knuckles rest against her chest. "Honestly, Beverly, I'll be content just to eat at the same table and enjoy your company while I can. If something happens, it happens..."  
  
"And if it doesn't, then at least we've had a nice meal together," her Celestine delicately reclaims her hand as she again finishes Mkaela's sentence. "I used to think that way at the Academy sometimes, but that was as far as I could take it..." She shrugs, the note of regret vanishing to make way for one of cautious optimism. "Perhaps tonight will be different. I just can't promise it."  
  
"It's okay. So, 2100, outside your quarters?"  
  
"And don't be late!"  
  


* * *

 

The fireworks three days before had been just the test run, and they had indeed been spectacular. Tonight, as the culmination to all the speechmaking and celebratory showmanship, they are magnificent.  
  
It starts with a single mote of light falling groundwards from the centre of the alien platform as lazily as might the first snowflake of winter, a mote that is met by an identical one floating upwards from the very pinnacle of the Spire. For the briefest of moments, everyone can see them touch.  
  
And then they are gone, replaced by an expanding web of glittering white that arcs gracefully downwards. The web cascades for a few, undisturbed seconds, before columns of light erupt from the city's edge, shimmering in every conceivable colour, starbursts exploding from within, spreading out over the city...  
  
Even though he had been awed by the trial run at the party, and still finds the carefully choreographed pyrotechnics stirringly beautiful, Maddyn departs his place at the official stand almost as soon as the fireworks begin, the new pip signifying his full Commandership now adding its own weight to the collar of his uniform.  
  
_Commander Maddyn Blaen_ , he smiles to himself, seeking out the relative quiet of his infirmary. _I do like the sound of that._  
  
_//So did I, when I got my pip,//_ Deanna Troi remarks from where she is standing in a doorway, looking suspiciously like she's been laying in wait for him. _//Sometimes, though, it's not worth the extra paperwork that comes with it.//_  
   
_//As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.//_ Maddyn brushes the complaint aside affably.  
   
Overhead thousands of tiny red glowballs form a lacy pattern of interlocking knots, the traditional bandai sigil of beneficence.  
  
_//On an entirely related note, Beverly and Mkaela are meeting for dinner in about half an hour,//_ Troi says as the doors to the medical complex slide open.  
  
_//So Mkaela was saying. Wouldn't say where they were going though.//_ He feels slightly miffed on this point. If she can tell him about the other 'event' of the day, she can tell him her plans for her little assignation with Doctor Crusher. After all, he has had a hand in it having reached that point. Some people just have no gratitude.  
  
_//Well, Beverly doesn't know either,//_ Troi shrugs as the duty nurse nods to the pair of them. _//But she was feeling both nervous and excited when I left her. Giddy as a school boy, as mother would say.//_  
  
With a flourish, Maddyn ushers his co-conspirator into his office and closes the door. "Mkaela was obsessing about what to wear when I spoke to her before the ceremony," he continues the conversation verbally now that they are secluded; a race as open as their own knows well the value of privacy, especially when discussing the lives and loves of others.  
  
"So was Beverly," Troi confides, both of them dropping into a chair either side of his desk. "We were almost late for the ceremony, she took so long. It's always so amusing...  
  
"...when it isn't you," Maddyn chuckles at the old saying."At least we don't have to worry about all that matrimonial wear the other races go on about."  
  
"But some of it _is_ very pretty," she chides him good naturedly. "If she weren't such a traditionalist, I know my mother wouldn't mind wearing something to her wedding. Just once." She makes a little gesture with thumb and forefinger, indicating the chance of such a thing actually happening.  
  
He makes an even smaller one. "My family would all have seizures if I did anything like that." He snickers at a thought. "The idea of marrying outside the species is enough to make them explode."  
  
"No wonder they haven't been speaking to mother recently."  
  
"Didn't she just marry one of those awful Founder things?"  
  
"I've met Odo," she nods. "He's actually aligned with the Bajorans. He _is_ a little reserved, but deep within his protoplasm, there beats a heart of goo."  
  
Maddyn's laugh emerges as a snort, mostly because he was trying to hold it back and failed. "That's awful!" he protests to her gleefully amused expression.  
  
"I know," she says with an evil little grin. "Now that Data can handle  humour, he's constantly trying things like that out on us." A sigh. "I do hope things go well for them tonight."  
  
"As do I," he agrees, expression sobering a little. "If they can create even just a little happiness between themselves, the universe will be the better for it. Goodness knows, with the way things are looking with us and the Klingons and the Cardassians and the Dominion, we can use all the happiness we can get."  
  
"Universal harmony through the judicious application and enjoyment of sex?" Deanna raises an eyebrow.  
  
"It's a theory that has its good points," he smiles lazily at her. "Especially for the people doing the 'negotiating'."  
  
"Flirt," she accuses without malice, a lazy smile of her own.  
  
"I try," he smirks a little immodestly.  
  
"We've got the rest of the night and unrestricted access to a medical grade replicator," she points out casually, fixing his gaze with her own as she lets down her hair. "How about trying... harder?"  
  
\---  
  
To Be Continued...


	6. Chapter 6

Return to Farpoint  
Chapter 6  
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"No. Not that. Nope. Uh-uh. Cruk, where the hell is it!"  
  
The soullessness of Mkaela's room has been temporarily dispelled. Not by furnishings, or pictures or momentos or art, or even the half-used candles clogging the bathroom. Yet, someone can now take a single glance through the doors and realise: someone lives here.  
  
Clothes are strewn everywhere, flung hither and thither by the tempestuous storm that is Mkaela preparing for a date. Dresses, skirts, slacks, tops: every single wearable item in her possession has been unpacked or pulled out of her data cache and replicated to be held up for scrutiny and ruthlessly evaluated before being tossed aside and the search continued.  
  
And though it takes her longer than she has anticipated, she does manage to settle on an outfit: a short sleeved satin dress in mid-summer green that reaches to just above her knees underneath a sleeveless coat in pale russet linen the hem of which brushes against the back of her calves. A pair of flat soled sandals of bronze leather that strap up to just beneath her knees completes the ensemble.  
  
Her previous choice had struck a more debonaire note, but would have been rather more fiddly to get out of should the night end up where she wants it to go. There's a lot to be said for uniforms.  
  
"Computer. Time," she calls out, hurriedly cleaning up the sartorial explosion through the simple expedience of hurling it all into a closet.  
  
"The time is 2049 hours."  
  
_I'm going to be late!_ she curses inwardly,grabbing her mother's shawl and draping it over the back of the lounge. A careful tug to position it properly, then she scurries into the bathroom  
and returns with a small basket. With the same eye for detail, she positions some of the candles from her ritual the day before to best effect.  
  
"Computer. Are the amended fire protocols for this room still operating?"  
  
"Affirmative."  
  
"Goooood," she breathes. No suppression forcefields when she lights the damn things, should she chance to bring Beverly back here.  
  
"Computer. Time."  
  
"The time is 2053 hours."  
  
A final delay to once more check her appearance in the mirror, then she taps her combadge where it sits obscured beneath her coat. "Commander Keri to _Enterprise_ , Transporter Room Three. One to beam up, please."  
  
"Beam out in ten seconds, Commander," the man on the other end of the channel replies. A brief memory of Alex as she recognises the transporter chief's accent as being Canadian.  
  
Just in time, she remembers that she's forgotten something. She lunges for the table, her fingers wrapping around the gift a moment before the glimmering caress of the transporter beam takes unshakable hold of her.  
  
The transporter dais is irritatingly solid when she drops onto it, twisting in the second before impact to avoid crushing her delicate prize. Ignoring the rather surprised expression on the transporter chief's broad and innocent features, Mkaela takes stock and discovers the only damage is to her ego.  
  
"Are you alright, Commander?" She accepts the young human's assisting hand to regain her footing.  
  
"Nothing to worry about, Lieutenant," she answers back, resisting the sudden urge to pat his honey brown curls. The way her father had always done that to her when she used to help him, back in the innocence of her childhood. "Just last minute nerves."  
  
"If you say so, Commander." He sounds a little dubious, but she lets it pass.  
  
"Turbolift?" she asks, favouring his concern with a smile now she has regained her composure.  
  
"Out the door, turn right, end of corridor."  
  
"Thank you kindly," she calls back over her shoulder, already exiting with alacrity. Though the doors open almost immediately it seems the lift takes too long to arrive and, despite moving on maxtrack, a subjective eternity to reach its destination. However, she's at Beverly's door and pressing the entry chime on the very stroke of 2100.  
  
A few moments later, the door parts to reveal a golden vision that quite takes her breath away. Without the anonymising influence of her uniform, Beverly is possessed of a subtle voluptuousness that the gold silk of her tube dress displays to the doctor's advantage. A little splash of gold cascades from each ear, matching the pale lemon of her lips. Even her hair matches, a pastel gold supplanting its normally fiery red hue bar for the very tips.  
  
Mkaela simply says "Wow."  
  
"You like?" Beverly asks, turning on the slight heels of her sandals to model for her date.  
  
"Very," she answers, holding out the silver flowers she had almost forgotten. "They're a native flower called a khecheba."  
  
"How sweet of you," Beverly beams, taking a sniff. "They look like my roses," she says after a moment. "But their scent is stronger and drier."  
  
"You grow roses?" asks Mkaela, following Beverly into her quarters as the younger woman takes another sniff and feels the texture of the khechebas' pallid blooms.  
  
"Yes" she explains, ushering her into the bed chamber and pointing to intensely coloured flowers growing on a stand opposite the foot of her bed. She replicates a vase for the khechebas, leaving Mkaela the chance to examine the way the blooms shift from magenta at the heart through ruby red to a dusky amber. "I've loved ever since I was a little girl."  
  
"Parallel evolution, perhaps?" Mkaela suggests. "Or little pan-galactic gardeners?"  
  
"Anything's possible. Shall we go?"  
  
"Let's. I'll show you where those flowers come from."  
  
Their journey back to the transporter room is rather more sedate, despite their mutual nervousness. The silent agreement against linking arms or holding onto one another leaves their hands free to subtly fidget and convey their inner feelings. What small conversation does pass between the two is concerned strictly with the minutia of the day, thoughts on the ceremony, reaction to the fireworks.  
  
"So, where exactly are we going?" Beverly finally asks when they exit the turbolift.  
  
"Cape Zaru, Bel'Chesa." The expectant look on Beverly's face prompts a further explanation. "Bel'Chesa is the planet's largest southern landmass, and Cape Zaru is a small town on its western coast line. There's a mineral in the sand that glows and shimmers when the dawn light strikes it at just the right angle, and I swear Beverly, it's one of the most glorious things you'll ever see."  
  
"Sounds like someone wants to chase the sun," Beverly beams back, leading the way into the transporter room. While the doctor heads to the dais, Mkaela scoots over to the controls and with lightning fingers enters the destination coordinates. Beverly gives the command to energise as soon as Mkaela joins her.  
  
Moments later they're standing in the centre of an ornamental khecheba grove, the sky above them dark and sprinkled with myriad sparkling motes of light. Touching Beverly's hand, she leads the way out of the grove, while explaining that viewed from above, the bushes and the spaces between them have been carefully arranged to resemble a khecheba blossom.  
  
Leaving the grove, they enter the park surrounding it. Having spent so long on Deneb, witnessing Beverly's surprise at the colour of the native foliage takes her somewhat by surprise.  
  
"It's all so red!"  
  
"Evaran's equivalent to chlorophyll was evolved under a different type of sun to that of many other worlds." _All those cues, so familiar and alien_ , she thinks again. "Red and orange absorb the most solar energy here. Actually, the Bandai had a rather similar reaction to yours to all the greenery we offworlders are so fond of, even back when Farpoint was a charade."  
  
"'Evaran'? That's the Bandai name for this planet?"  
  
"According to Zorn, it's some ancient word from a lost dialect that means 'home stone'."  
  
The fluting warble of batsong penetrates the conversation slightly as they pass through the ring of trees that skirt the park's edge. The leaves rustle in response to the small creatures' movements, and there is the occasional flapping of wings.  
  
"Ahh. You know, the original Farpoint had all of that 'off-world greenery'," Beverly points out. "We were on the lookout for anything suspicious, but that wasn't something we really thought about."  
  
Exiting the park, the two become aware of the faint sound of waves breaking in the distance.  
  
"Zorn and his people did a lot of research on the Federation after first contact was made,' she grins, rolling her eyes a little at Zorn's earnestness, a trait no longer having to deal with the man makes endearing and even admirable. "The Bandai really did want the growth our presence, as allies and trading partners, would afford them so they designed Farpoint to be as Federation-friendly as possible. And their trapped alien being telepathic only made things easier for them."  
  
"I see," Beverly nods, looking around. "When I was here last time, the planet was so harsh, and the Bandai lived only in the old city next to where the creature had landed. When I see what you and your people have done in just ten years, the way you've made this place so much more hospitable... It amazes me."  
  
"It's like I told you in the infirmary that first time we met: the Bandai couldn't have been more helpful or committed in working with us to build what we have, reclaim what we have. It's going to take several generations, but with ecosphere regeneration settlements like this one along with all the weather control tech we're using, they'll help make their planet thrive again. I won't be Risa, but eventually it will become its own sort of paradise."  
  
The sounds of the sea are louder now, and for the first time they are accompanied by the faint scent of salt air.  
  
Beverly touches Mkaela's shoulder, a little frown maring the beauty of her features. "You seem a little disappointed, despite having helped achieve so much."  
  
Mkaela shakes her head, taking Beverly's hand and kissing softly the slightly curled fingers. "I'm just feeling emotional and nostalgic."  
  
Her date answers with an understanding nod.

 

* * * 

  
To Beverly, the Cape Zaru settlement is small even by the standards of a starship's crew. The street down which the two of them wander almost entirely on their own is also the town's only street, running from the edge of the town and circling around the park. The buildings on either side are built long and narrow in what her barest familiarity with their culture suggests is the traditional architectural style of the Bandai, which is a reasonable approximation of the style Federation architects would dub dub 'terrace'. There's a general supply depot, a school, a small number of communal recreational establishments, and a surgery scattered amongst the hundred or so homes that have been established here.

It is into one of these communal establishments, larger than any of the other buildings, that Mkaela leads her. An incredibly striking young bandai man leads them down a flight of stairs and out onto a balcony carved into the face of the small bluff on which the settlement has been built. With a nod and a charming smile, he hands each of them a slim and much ornamented menu PADD before disappearing back up the stairs.

They spend the five minutes until he returns deciding on what to order, with Mkaela offering Beverly her advice and experience on the local cuisine; although Beverly had spent a few days at the original Farpoint prior to the _Enterprise_ 's arrival, both she and Wesley had rather unadventurously stuck to familiar fare. Conversation doesn't begin until the waiter vanishes up the stairs for a second time.

"I notice we're alone down here," she ventures, gesturing to the empty balcony with its four unoccupied tables. "Everyone else seems to be upstairs."

"Nothing to do with me," Mkaela answers her unspoken suspicions with a cheerful grin. "Well, not really. It's only a couple of hours away from dawn here, so they're actually all having breakfast before they start for the day. But I'm not going to complain about it being just you and me and the gentle sound of the sea."

Beverly just answers that with a small smile, still feeling a little anxious about her night out with Mkaela and the attraction she feels towards the beautiful half-bajoran, an attraction she knows to be more than reciprocated.

_Am I being unfaithful to Jean Luc? Is there anything between us to be unfaithful to? What is it about her that makes part of me want to sleep with her and part of me want to hide in my office and ignore that other part? Why haven't I been able to decide if I want to do this or not?_

Mkaela, unaware of Beverly's jumbled thoughts, looks out over the sea, its surface dark and sprinkled with shimmering motes of diffracted starlight. Seeing the dark- skinned woman in profile highlights the little crinkles on the bridge of her nose, once more rousing the half forgotten daydreams of what it might feel like to have those ridges dragged across her body, against her nipples, between her...

She stamps her mental foot down furiously, stopping herself before that particular train of thought can cause a embarrassing blush.

_Would it be an embarrassment?_ a darkly seductive voice asks from down near her hind-brain, seated amidst her most ancient and primal drives. _That's why you came here, isn't it? To share your bodies with each other..._

_No, I came here to... to..._

_To prove you can exist beyond Jean Luc's sphere of influence, perhaps? To prove to yourself and any one else whose business it isn't that you have as much right as he or Will or Deanna or Data to have fun with someone...?_

"So, tell me more about Tycho City and your house next to Lake Armstrong?" Mkaela prompts casually, her question coming as the waiter returns with two narrow and fluted glasses and a thermal unit holding a chilled bottle of some local wine recommended by her date. He pours them each half a glass before retreating back up the stairs again with the promise that meals will be ready momentarily.

"You make it sound so grand," Beverly answers, taking a sip. It has a certain very dry quality to it which doesn't overly surprise her, but the taste is not at all unpleasant. "It's like being on any other planet, except for the fact that the life support systems were as much artificial as they were natural, and when the solar filters glitched, as they do sometimes being only machines, it could get quite hot."

Nodding, Mkaela sips her own drink, resting back in her chair a little. "I'm actually a little worried about being posted to a starship again," she confides, catching Beverly's gaze.

"Why?"

"I've spent over six years running around planetside. If things get too much, I can pop a window or always just go outside and take a deep breath." She shrugs her concern away. "I just think it's going to take me a little while to get out of that reflex."

Beverly makes a gesture of understanding. "I felt like that a little after running Starfleet Medical then returning to the _Enterprise_. At least for me it passed quickly."

Because you lived in a sustained environment," Mkaela counters. "For someone like you it could be argued that this, right here, is the aberrant experience."

"The humanoid mind is amazingly adaptive," Beverly smiles. "Even with all the advanced races in today's galactic society, we still understand so little of how it all works. But I have no trouble believing you'll deal admirably with it."

"I hope so. Ah, here comes our food."

As with Deanna earlier in the day, conversation lags while they eat even though Mkaela keeps their banter going with remarkable dedication. They never once mention sex or the future beyond this meal.

But for Beverly at least, what may come is very much at the forefront of her mind. For every rationalisation and logical reason she can summon against spending the night with Mkaela, the little voice lurking near her hindbrain finds a counter argument that erodes her resolve. Neither reason nor desire, however, can answer the question at the very heart of her dilemma: what will she regret more?

Sleeping with Mkaela, or sleeping alone?

By the time they leave half an hour later, it's a question she still has no answer to. And Mkaela's expectant silence as the two of them make their way down to the beach makes it an answer she desperately needs for both their sakes.

"It'll be dawn here in a little while," Mkaela offers as they perch on a rock and remove their shoes. "You'll love the view."

The sand squedges pleasantly between her toes as they begin to amble along the beach.    

"It's been nice, spending the evening with you," Beverly remarks after a little while, the sound of the ocean a soft wash of  background noise. "I'm not sure how I would have handled this if I was in your place. I'm not exactly one for first moves"

"If you were in my place, you wouldn't be able to see the beach light up," Mkaela jokes softly. Despite her inner confusion, Beverly finds herself chuckling along with her. Yes, she probably would have taken Mkaela to a holodeck instead of somewhere real.

It feels good to laugh this way; free and easy

"Jack and I made love on a beach once," Beverly confides. "We'd seen it in holovids, and read it in some books I inherited from my grandmother."

"How'd you like it?" Mkaela asks, cocking her head a little.

"It was very romantic to begin with, very passionate. But it's amazing where sand can end up, and how it can kill a mood." A smile summoned by fond memory touches her lips as she looks out over the sea, the pale streaks of the predawn touching the horizon. "But we were very glad we did it, nonetheless."

"Fantasies can be like that," Mkaela agrees, and Beverly finds herself wondering if the half-bajoran has ever played poker or whatever her culture's equivalent to it might be. "There's always the possibility that it'll never work out quite the way you expect it to."

"But you never know unless you try," Beverly concludes softly, and in so saying finds the resolution she has been seeking so ardently.

The sound of Beverly's shoes dropping onto the sand that summons Mkaela's attention from where the dark skinned woman walks a half-step ahead of her. She turns, a hopeful little expression in her eyes as Beverly reaches out to touch her hand, take it into her own.

A second pair of shoes strikes the sand as their other hands meet and the fingers entwine. The distance between them is filled with a pregnant look as all the world goes away and there is a moment of silence filled with the beating of their hearts and the small sounds of their breathing.

The first rays of the sun crest the horizon.

Their first kiss is chaste, a shy little caress of the lips.

Beneath their feet, a ripple of light passes across the surface of the sand, running upwards from the surf.

Beverly's eyelids flutter closed as she loses herself to the sensation of that second kiss, the forgotten softness of another woman's lips teasing her own open and the mingling of their breath.

Myriad colours skitter across the surface of the sand, shimmering and sparkling, a silent crescendo of light that envelops them both.

Mkaela and Beverly are too lost in one another to care.

\---

To Be Concluded...


	7. Chapter 7

Return to Farpoint  
Chapter 7  
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-  
  
The mid-morning light seeps through the polarized windows of Mkaela's apartment. It spills across the floor and bags and boxes, revealing a trail of hastily discarded clothes leading haphazardly from the entrance and into the bedroom where she and Beverly lay spooned upon a very dishevelled bed. The damp quilt lies mostly on the floor at its foot.  
  
"No regrets?" Mkaela asks softly, looking at their combined shadow upon the wall.  
  
"None," her lover replies, head propped in one hand, the other tracing the complex geometric pattern that has been tattooed on Mkaela's right shoulder in blood green ink. "What does this represent? It looks... familiar... somehow."  
  
"It's my family sigil," she answers. "Traditionally it's applied with a brand shortly after birth, but Mama thought it was barbaric and against the Prophets so wouldn't allow Papa to do it. She wasn't wrong about that. It is a brutal thing to do to a child. But he was right, too, in a way."  
  
Beverly nods in understanding before realisation illuminates her face. "Of course, Galordon Core!"  
  
"What?" Mkaela asks, looking over her shoulder in confusion.  
  
It clearly takes a moment to condense the story. "I once treated a romulan who had an old scar like this on his shoulder. I… What's wrong?"  
  
Despite herself, hearing her lover utter that word makes her flinch. "I'm not Romulan."  
  
"It doesn't matter to me,"  Beverly tries to reassure her. "I've known you were half romulan ever since the reception."  
  
Mkaela twists around, her mood suddenly stern. "No. That name. Romulan. I hate it. The Federation gave my father's people that name so long ago now they'll never be anything else to us. I can't win that fight. The concept of romulan means something that rihanha doesn't seem to anymore. But papa's people are my people just as much as my mother's are even if I present mostly as bajora. The Rihanh predate the Federation, and being half rihanha it grates enough that I don't want the people I like to misname us."  
  
Beverly nods, looking stricken. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean--".  
  
Mkaela puts her fingers to Beverly's lips to silence her for a while before languidly sliding them across her cheek and into the hair she selfishly wishes was still fiery red. "You know now. I got into some dreadful fights with other children because papa wasn't bajora, as you might imagine. As I grew up I was able to understand how he could have exiled himself from ch'Rihan out of fear what the Rihanh were becoming yet still be proud to be rihanha. When I was old enough to understand how he could feel like that and what that sigil represents, I insisted papa give me my birthright. Out of respect for mama, he tattooed me instead."  
  
She leaves out how the fucking spoonies murdered him the next day. That the tattoo represents the last time her papa ever touched her as much as it does the history of their shared blood.  
  
Her fingers move to caress the rim of Beverly's ear the way she likes her own to be touched. "It's a sore spot for me, and as a doctor I'm sure you can appreciate there's so much more satisfying things we can be touching. It's just you and me and the present. The last thing I want to do is bring up the past or be a regret."  
  
Rolling onto her back, she stares up at the ceiling for a moment, hoping she hasn't killed the mood, then looks back at her lover.  
  
"The present is a wonderful place to be," Beverly smiles, caressing her cheek before nestling against her, head resting on Mkaela's shoulder. "And I agree fully with the diagnosis."  
  
"Good," Mkaela nods.  
  
"Am I everything you desired?" Beverly asks, her slick fingertip suddenly circling Mkaela's navel.  
  
"Ooh, yeah," she nods, memories of the previous hours making her smile. "It was like I had my own private Risa. I think we both really needed this."  
  
Beverly's hand drops lower, fingers skittering dangerously through dark curls. The bite mark they find still throbs a little. "I haven't felt this... this satisfied in a long time."  
  
"Good sex does that," Mkaela grins, the hand resting against her Celestine's back stirring slightly, making its own downwards journey.  
  
"Brazen hussy," Beverly scolds affectionately, in no way disagreeing with her.  
  
 "I'm not the one with her hand between another woman's legs," she retorts.  
  
"No. You're just the one who's letting me do it."  
  
"Oh, so very guilty as charged."  
  
The kiss Beverly gives her leads to a second, and then a third and a fourth, each more passionate and hungry than the last. Soon all thoughts of identity and belonging are completely subsumed by the fire burning beneath her belly, heat and light consuming her as the two of them engage in another deliciously thorough exercise in love-making, each seeking to satiate in the other a desire that they only seem to inflame.  
  
Eventually the realities of the universe manage to intrude upon their hedonism in the form of a reminder message about the _Enterprise_ 's departure time, bringing their tryst to its inevitable conclusion.  
  
Mkaela rolls over onto her side to watch Beverly shower, body still aquiver in the afterglow.   There is as always something soothing and comforting about watching the quietly steaming water wash over her lover's body, about watching the way it darkens her hair and flows over her shoulders, down her back, between the soft perfection of her breasts and across her belly, cascades down her legs. The temptation to join her, to take two handfuls of gel and clean her only to get her hot and sticky again, is so strong that Mkaela bites her bottom lip almost hard enough to draw blood.  
  
When it is Mkaela's turn, she takes care to ensure that should Beverly be observing her the experience as pleasurable. And while giving herself to the enveloping  embrace and simple sensuality of the water, she finds herself longing for her Celestine to stay. It's not love: of that she is sure. Having loved and lost three times in her life, that particular crazy joyride of emotions and hormones is something with which she is intimately familiar and there isn't even the spectre of it here. In all honesty as much as she feels the ache of that Alex shaped hole in her life and will for some time to come, the idea of trying to fill it or let anyone else make something like it makes her want to scream and not in the good way. Simply, she wants things to stay as they are right now because their physicalities are still so new and interesting to each other and a not inconsiderable part of her wants to mine all those possibilities to complete exhaustion before letting them go.  
  
The discovery that Beverly's self control matches her own is a source of both relief and disappointment. However when she ambles into the living room, Mkaela is pleasantly surprised to discover that, like herself, Beverly is still clad in the fluffy white softness of a bathrobe. Walking up to where her now regrettably ex-lover stands looking out over Farpoint's north-western expanse, she wraps her arms lazily around Beverly's waist and kisses her chastely — well, mostly chastely — on the side of the neck.  
   
"How long until you have to report back to the _Enterprise_?"  
  
"A little under an hour." She sounds a little less than neutral about the idea.  
  
"Time enough for breakfast then?"  
  
"Mmmm-- Oh, hell!" The look of dreamy content on Beverly's face suddenly devolves into one of consternation.  
  
"What?" Mkaela asks as she feels Beverly's body tense. Instinctively, she relaxes her embrace.  
  
"I was so caught up with, well, everything, I forgot to cancel breakfast with Jean Luc!" Beverly exclaims, consternation becoming mortification. "Where's your comms?"  
  
"Um, over there." Mkaela follows close behind as Beverly scurries over and places a call home to her captain. "How long ago were you meant to meet him?"  
  
"An hour," Beverly answers, making little adjustments to her robe that just happen to show a little more of her cleavage. "I'm surprised he hasn't called to see where I am."  
  
"Command level 'Do Not Disturb', remember?" chuckles Mkaela, sitting down on the couch next to Beverly as the Federation seal disappears from the screen to be replaced by one of Picard in his ready room. Unlike them he is, of course, in uniform.  
  
"Ah Beverly, there you are," he says, the intimacy in his tone revealing that Mkaela is outside the range of the visual pickup. "I was about to send Lieutenant Daniels with an away team to look for you." It's only now that his voice is lacking that natural and instinctive arrogance of command that Mkaela realises how much like her maternal uncle he sounds.  
  
"I am sorry, Jean Luc," Beverly gushes. "I meant to tell you that I couldn't make it this morning was going to have to be cancelled, but I guess because I wasn't sure if I'd be back last night or not, it slipped my mind."  
  
"Ah yes," he nods in an understanding sort of way, though there is something about his manner that says he is a little intrigued about his chief medical officer's activities. "The hazards of shore leave, which certainly seem to have been onerous. You'll have to tell me what you've been up to when you get back."  
  
"Your wrist," Mkaela whispers impishly, briefly making a fist and grinning wickedly as Beverly's cheeks flush in response.  
  
"Is anything the matter?" Picard asks, leaning forward ever so slightly as he catches the sideways look and reaction that follows it.  
  
"Com--" Beverly starts, then clearly makes a decision. "Mkaela was just making a joke. About last night." She turns the visual pickup so that he can see Mkaela sitting next to her. There is a momentary twitch of an eye as he takes in the scene and reaches what she suspects to be a pretty accurate conclusion about just what Beverly might be telling about when she gets back.  
  
"Ah. I see," he says, the undercurrent of curiosity in his manner becoming something quite different. "Well. Doctor. No harm done. I'll see you back onboard at eleven hundred."  
  
"Alright, Jean Luc," Beverly refuses to acknowledge the retreat to formality. "Thank you for being so understanding."  
  
"Think nothing of it," he shrugs the comment aside, in a hurry to end the conversation. "Good day, Commander Keri."  
  
"Kula," Mkaela waves as he breaks the connection. Chuckling, she reaches out and flips the screen of the comms unit shut. "Did you just ruthlessly use me to make a point? Because I think it worked."  
  
Beverly shakes her head unconvincingly, her expression telling a different story. "We just caught him off guard. Who I choose to make love… who I choose to fuck is none of his business."  
  
"Bull. Shit," Mkaela calls her out, but without the least rancor. "I just spent the night using you to get over my divorce; I'm the last person in existence right now in a position or with the desire to complain about you doing the same with me. If I'd had a little warning you were going to flaunt me, I could have let him 'accidentally' see this." She tugs open the collar of her robe to show the still quite visible bite mark just above her collar bone.  
  
"I'm learning to live for the moment," Beverly brushes again, reaching out to touch it but  wisely pulling back at the last moment.  
  
"Based on everything, I'd say you were doing quite well." She pauses, fighting her own desire to touch the other woman again. "All this… I haven't made things difficult for you have I?"  
  
"Not at all," Beverly reassures her. "He'll probably be bit out of joint for a day or two, then everything will be the same again. Which is half the problem. But who knows: seeing I'm not just going to just wait anymore might prod him in the right direction. Regardless of all that, I've had the most wonderful time and I'll always be grateful to you for it."  
  
"Then you can buy breakfast."  
  
Beverly's dress is packed into a little carry bag while her lacy underthings are run through the autovalet. And then they splurge a little, eschewing uniforms to use Mkaela's leftover replicator credits to make themselves something to wear before setting to on the continental breakfast Beverly orders into existence. It's a nice way to wind things down.  
  
By all accounts the more elegant of the two women, Beverly continues her metallic theme with a silver ensemble made from bolian silk. It consists of a trimmed tunic covered with embroidered jacquard flowers, worn over a pair of shimmery slacks that taper from her hips to her ankles in away reminiscent of a time-exposed picture of a waterfall. Her sandals from the previous night serve to add a splash of contrasting colour.  
  
On the other hand, Mkaela finds herself drawn to a simple calf-length cotton dress with spaghetti shoulder straps that have a tendency to slip down one shoulder. Shot through with an intricate and random web of actinic blue from the tie-dying, there's just something about the way the electric brightness of it looks against the darkness of her skin that pleases both women. Beverly suggests the pair of greco-romanesque sandals in a matching leather that complete the outfit.  
  
They walk slowly to the nearest transporter room, holding hands, fingers entwined. Entering, they find it unattended.  
  
"Unusual," Beverly remarks.  
  
"We didn't tell them we were coming," Mkaela answers, looking across to the ready room and realising what's going on. "They're engineers, there's always plenty for them to do instead of standing around on the off chance someone comes in."  
  
Moving to the operator's console, she watches Beverly mount the dais then opens a comms channel.  
  
"Farpoint transporter control to _Enterprise_ Ops. I have Doctor Crusher waiting to beam aboard."  
  
"This is the _Enterprise_ ," the precisely enunciated voice of the android at the ship's system operations console answers. "Transporter Room One is standing by to receive you. Transmitting coordinates."  
  
"When every so often comes around, remember me?" Mkaela asks.  
  
"I will," Beverly promises.  
  
"Energising."  
  
A hum of quantum mechanics and a swirl of starstuff, then she's gone.  
  
 

* * *

  
  
"You can come out now."  
  
Maddyn emerges from where he'd been lurking in the transporter's ready room. He signals for the crewman who actually operates the transporter to remain where she is before doing so.  
  
"I was just saying toodles to Deanna, and I thought I'd stick around in case you showed up," he explains, spreading his hands with a 'there you have it' expression  
  
Mkaela shows no signs of believing him. "Really."  
  
"She was going to stay, but she has an appointment she would have been late for if she had."  
  
"One I'm for some reason going to assume is suspiciously similar to the one we appear to be having, no doubt?"  
  
"Oh, no doubt," he smirks, knowing when he's being teased. "How'd you know?"  
  
"I'm not stupid? She answers, walking out of the room without waiting for him.  
  
"So, how was it?" he asks, catching up.  
  
Mkaela answers him with a cartwheel.  
  
"That good, huh?" he remarks, chuckling as her exuberance.  
  
"Even better," she smiles, steering them out of the Spire and on to one of the concourses. "It was glorious. It was marvellous. It was, most importantly, fun."  
  
"I haven't seen you like this for a while."  
  
"I haven't been," she agrees, stopping at a street vendor to buy them both a glozztwost. They continue on, alternately licking and nibbling at the confectionery. "So, did you and Troi get up to anything?"  
  
"You mean when we weren't conspiring to get your and Crusher together?" he asks with mock innocence. It earns him a playful punch in the arm. "Relationship meddling is an occupational hazard of knowing a member of one of the Betazoid Houses," he shrugs, not in any way bothered by his actions. "Besides, it worked."  
  
"Lucky for you. But seriously, what were you two up to last night?"  
  
"Weeeellllllllllllll," he draws out the word. "As you know, we betazoids tend to be receptive to the unique emotional 'frequencies' of our friends..."  
  
"You were eavesdropping on us?!"  
  
"Eavesdropping implies we were doing it intentionally," he holds up his hands in a gesture of warding, the sudden look in her eyes making him wary. "You two were fucking loud, and we could have heard on the opposite side of the city without meaning to because we're attuned to you. But anyway, we got somewhat ''occupied' ourselves for most of the night."  
  
"Well good for you," she chuckles with salacious good humour, ruffling his hair affectionately. "We are totally going to have to trade stories.  
  
"Seems fair," he grins immodestly. "Because it was partly your fault it happened you know, you and Crusher. You were the fuel for the fire of a certain mutual attraction."  
  
"Excuses, excuses," she waves his explanation away good naturedly.  
  
They spend the next few hours just meandering around the centre of Farpoint, passing through various parks and plazas and malls as they fill each other in on the more interesting points of the previous day. Of the most intimate occurrences they speak little but they don't have to. There are flashes and memories that are explicit, but mostly it's the emotions they share, playing like a piece of jazz full of riffs and crescendos and rhythms and improvisations.  
  
Twice Mkaela's communicator interrupts them: Ops notifying her first of the departure of the _Enterprise_ , then of the arrival of the _Destiny_ a mere two hours later. Her reaction to the second is particularly foul minded and involves forcibly inserting time pieces into hard to reach places.  
   
"So this is it," Maddyn says upon their eventual return to her apartment. It looks essentially unchanged from when he helped her move in those few days ago, even down to the way the packing crates are placed next to each other.       
  
"Yeah," she answers, a slight catch in her voice. "Prophets, it's going to be hard to get used to the fact you won't be with me anymore. That we might never see each other again."  
  
"There's always the subspace net," he says lightly, feeling that same catch. She's been friend and confidant and student, all to him, and he's going to feel the presence of a Mkaela-shaped hole in his life for some time.  
  
"That's not the same!" she protests. "I can't share a hug over the net. I can't cry on your shoulder. I feel like I'm getting divorced all over again."  
  
"Yeah. I know." He reaches out and hugs her so very tightly against him, feeling her return the embrace, trying to make this simple action say more than words or thoughts. And in a way, it does.  
  
"Commander Keri to _Destiny_ Ops," she announces, finally pulling away and hitting her combadge. "Ready for beam out."  
  
"This is _Destiny_. Beam out in ten seconds."  
  
"When every so often comes around, remember me?" he asks, almost quite enough not to be heard. They both smile.  
  
"I will," she promises.  
  
"Energising."  
  
A hum of quantum mechanics and a swirl of starstuff, then she and her things are gone.  
  
"Fair voyages sweet friend, and may your days to come be good."  
  
Hugging himself, he leaves the empty room without a backwards glance.  
\---  
  
...The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it ends. I hope you all enjoyed my nostalgia trip.
> 
> Before you go, a question: I mentioned conceits at the beginning, and one of them was the unseen spectre of Alex. In your head, were they male or female?
> 
> When I wrote Return To Farpoint, 90s Australia had its own brand of sexual politics snaking through people's headspaces. Not wishing to put any particular lady loving orientation in the villain seat I chose as gender neutral name I could think of after playing "Voyager: Elite Force" and carefully structured every reference to avoid pronouns. Interestingly the readers at the time were essentially evenly distributed as I recall on the gender they assigned Mkaela's cheating ex.


End file.
